THE  WAR 
AND THE  FUTURE 


JOHN  MASEFIELD 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  WAR  AND  THE 
FUTURE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •    BOSTON   •   CHICAGO  •    DAL  LA* 
ATLANTA  •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •   BOMBAY  •   CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TOXONTO 


THE  WAR  AND  THE 
FUTURE 


BY 

JOHN  MASEFIELD 

Author  of  "Gallipoli,"  "The  Everlasting  Mercy," 
"The  Widow  in  the  Bye  Street,"  etc. 


jfteto  gotfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1918 


A.U  rights  reserved 


COPTBIOHT,  1918 

BY  JOHN  MASEFIELD 
S*t  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  July.   1818 


Coflege 
Library 


TO 

THOMAS  W.  LAMONT 


1115806 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

ST.  GEORGE  AND  THE  DRAGON i 

A  Speech  for  St.  George's  Day,  April  23rd, 
1918. 

THE  WAR  AND  THE  FUTURE 44 

A  Lecture  Given  in  America  January-May, 
1918. 


ST.  GEORGE  AND  THE  DRAGON 

A  SPEECH  FOR  ST.  GEORGE'S  DAY, 
APRIL  23RD,  1918 


THE  WAR  AND  THE 
FUTURE 

ST.  GEORGE  AND  THE  DRAGON 

A  Speech  for  St.  George's  Day, 
April  23rd,  1918 

FRIENDS,  for  a  long  time  I  did  not  know  what 
to  say  to  you  in  this  second  speaking  here.  I 
could  fill  a  speech  with  thanks  and  praise :  thanks 
for  the  kindness  and  welcome  which  has  met  me 
up  and  down  this  land  wherever  I  have  gone, 
and  praise  for  the  great  national  effort  which 
I  have  seen  in  so  many  places  and  felt  every- 
where. We,  who,  like  you,  have  had  to  lay 
by  our  pleasant  ways,  and  take  up  hard  ones, 
and  go  up  a  bitter  path  to  an  end  men  cannot 
see,  know  how  great  your  sacrifice  and  your 
effort  are.  But  I  could  not  thank  you  or  praise 
you  enough,  and  even  if  I  could,  the  best  praise 
and  thanks  are  silent.  If  and  when  I  return 
to  England,  I  will  speak  your  praise. 


S  The  War  and  the  Future 

So,  casting  about  for  a  theme,  I  thought,  that 
today  is  St.  George's  Day,  the  day  of  the  Patron 
Saint  of  England,  and  that  today,  in  the  far 
past,  that  great  knight  of  God  rode  out,  in  the 
Eastern  country,  and  killed  a  dragon  which  had 
been  devouring  women,  and  that  Englishmen 
had  thought  that  deed  a  holy,  and  most  beauti- 
ful and  manly  thing,  and  had  chosen  St.  George 
from  among  all  saints  to  be  their  saint,  and  had 
taken  his  banner  to  be  their  banner,  and  called 
upon  him,  century  after  century,  when  they 
went  into  battle.  For  they  felt  that  such  a  man 
lived  on  after  death,  and  would  surely  help  all 
holy  and  beautiful  and  manly  men  for  ever  and 
for  ever. 

And  I  thought,  too,  that  on  this  day,  354 
years  ago,  the  child,  William  Shakespeare,  was 
born,  in  that  old  house  in  Stratford  which  so 
many  of  you  have  gone  to  see.  And  that  on 
this  same  day,  after  he  had  done  his  day's 
work,  he  passed  out  of  this  life,  into  that  King- 
dom of  England  which  is  in  the  kindling  mind, 
in  all  its  moments  of  beauty,  and  that  there  he, 
too,  lives  for  ever,  to  give  peace,  even  as  St. 
George  gives  a  sword,  to  all  who  call  upon  him. 

So,  thinking  these  things,  all  the  more  keenly, 
because  I  am  far  from  England,  in  this  sweet 


The  War  and  the  Future  3 

season  of  April,  when  the  apple  blossom  is 
beginning,  I  felt  that  I  would  talk  of  England. 
Not  of  any  England  of  commerce  or  of  history, 
nor  of  any  state  called  England,  but  of  that 
idea  of  England  for  which  men  are  dying,  as  I 
speak,  along  5,000  miles  of  war. 

I  believe  that  the  people  of  a  country  build 
up  a  spirit  of  that  country,  build  up  a  soul, 
which  never  dies,  but  lingers  about  the  land 
for  ever.  I  believe  that  every  manly  and  beau- 
tiful and  generous  and  kindling  act  is  eternal, 
and  makes  that  soul  still  greater  and  more  liv- 
ing, till  in  the  land  where  manly  and  kindling 
souls  have  lived,  there  is  everywhere  about  the 
earth,  present  like  beauty,  like  inspiration,  this 
living  gift  of  the  dead,  this  soul.  And  nations 
are  only  great  when  they  are  true  to  that  soul. 
Men  can  only  be  great  when  they  are  true  to  the 
best  they  have  imagined.  And  I  believe  that  in 
times  of  stress,  in  national  danger,  in  calamity, 
the  soul  behind  a  nation  kindles  and  quickens 
and  is  alive  and  enters  into  men,  and  the  men 
of  the  nation  get  strength  and  power  from  it. 

I  believe  that  that  great  soul,  made  by  the 
courage  and  beauty  and  wisdom  of  the  millions 
of  the  race,  is  the  god  of  the  race,  to  protect 
it  and  guide  it  and  to  lead  it  into  safety.  And 


4  The  War  and  the  Future 

men  turning  to  it  in  time  of  trouble  and  calamity 
are  helped  and  guarded  by  it,  and  brought  out 
of  the  land  of  Egypt  by  it  into  their  pleasant 
heritage. 

Yet  nations,  like  men,  sometimes  turn  away 
from  their  true  selves  to  follow  false  selves,  and 
to  serve  false  gods.  All  the  old  Bible  is  full 
of  stories  of  a  little  nation  sometimes  true, 
sometimes  false  to  its  soul,  and  falling  into 
calamity,  and  then  being  quickened  and  helped, 
and  returning  to  the  truth  and  coming  to  mar- 
vellous things,  to  the  green  pastures,  where 
goodness  and  loving  kindness  follow  men  all 
the  days  of  their  life. 

Understanding  is  the  only  thing  worth  while 
in  this  life.  Art  is  nothing  but  complete  under- 
standing of  something.  All  writers  long  to  un- 
derstand the  spirit  of  their  race. 

Let  me  say  now,  that  25  years  ago,  it 
would  have  been  difficult  for  an  Englishman 
to  speak  here,  about  the  spirit  of  England,  and 
to  claim  that  it  is  something  of  the  spirit  of  St. 
George,  a  manly  and  beautiful  spirit,  ready  to 
help  some  one  weaker,  and  something  of  the 
spirit  of  Shakespeare,  a  just  and  tender  spirit, 
fond  of  fun  and  kindness  and  of  the  rough  and 
busy  life  of  men.  That  delicate,  shy,  gentle, 


The  War  and  the  Future  5 

humorous  and  most  manly  soul  is  the  soul  of 
England.  It  is  in  Chaucer,  in  Shakespeare,  in 
Dickens.  It  is  in  the  old  ballads  and  tales  of 
Robin  Hood,  who  stood  up  for  the  poor,  and 
was  merry  walking  in  the  green  forest.  It  is 
in  the  little  villages  of  the  land,  in  the  old 
homes,  in  the  churches,  in  countless  old  carvings, 
in  old  bridges,  in  old  tunes,  and  in  the  old  acts 
of  the  English,  a  shy,  gentle,  humorous  and 
most  manly  soul,  that  stood  up  for  the  poor 
and  cared  for  beauty.  No  finer  thing  can  be 
said  of  men  than  that,  that  they  stood  up  for 
the  poor  and  cared  for  beauty;  that  they  cared 
to  be  just  and  wise. 

Nearly  300  years  ago,  the  life  of  England 
suffered  a  rude  change  in  seven  years  of  civil 
war.  The  ways  of  life  which  had  been  settled 
for  five  generations  were  suddenly  and  com- 
pletely changed.  There  followed  a  turbulent 
and  unsettled  century,  during  which,  for  reasons 
of  party,  a  foreign  king,  and  line  of  kings,  with 
foreign  interests,  and  foreign  methods,  came 
into  our  land. 

And  at  the  same  time,  something  else  came 
into  our  land.  Industry  and  adventure  had 
long  been  virtues  of  the  English;  but  now  the 
two  together  began  to  create  competitive  com- 


6  The  War  and  the  Future 

mercialism.  And  just  as  competitive  commer- 
cialism began,  a  small  clique  of  corrupt  politi- 
cians, gathered  under  the  foreign  king,  and  by 
bribery  and  iniquity  of  every  kind,  seized  the 
common  lands  of  the  villages  of  England  and 
enclosed  them.  Until  then,  the  country  folk 
in  England  had  shared  large  tracts  of  land,  so 
that,  though  they  were  poor,  they  still  had  graz- 
ing for  cows  and  sheep  and  geese,  and  wood- 
land for  firing.  Now  by  various  acts  of  legal 
robbery  these  lands  were  taken  from  them,  and 
they  were  reduced  to  an  extreme  poverty. 
They  were  forced  into  a  position  very  like 
slavery.  They  had  no  possessions  except  their 
right  hands.  There  was  no  St.  George  to  stand 
up  for  them,  nor  any  Robin  Hood,  except  that 
coarse  and  bitter  truth-teller,  William  Cobbett. 
They  had  the  choice  to  be  the  slaves  of  the  land- 
owners or  of  the  factory-owners,  and  the  great 
mass  of  the  populace  ceased  to  have  any  share 
of  what  life  offers.  The  enclosing  of  the  com- 
mons robbed  them  of  leisure  and  independence, 
the  coming  of  the  factories  took  them  from  the 
fields  and  the  old  communities,  and  flung  them 
into  new  ones,  which  were  allowed  to  grow  up 
anyhow,  without  art,  without  thought,  without 
faith  or  hope  or  charity,  till  the  face  of  the  land 


The  War  and  the  Future  7 

was  blackened,  and  the  soul  of  the  land  under  a 
cloud. 

If  you  consider  the  thought  and  the  voices 
of  that  time,  you  can  see  that  the  soul  of  the 
land  was  under  a  cloud.  The  thought  and  the 
voices  of  that  time  are  things  divorced  from 
the  body  of  the  people.  The  thought  is  the 
possession  of  a  few  leisured  men.  It  is  not 
the  joy  of  a  great  body  of  men.  The  voices 
are  the  voices  of  a  few  men  crying  in  the  wil- 
derness that  things  are  evil. 

The  thought  of  that  time  was  the  thought  of 
Dr.  Johnson's  Club,  and  of  Joshua  Reynolds' 
patrons.  The  voices  are  the  voices  of  Wm. 
Blake  crying  aloud  that  he  would  rebuild  the 
city  of  God  among  those  black  Satanic  mills, 
and  of  Wm.  Wordsworth,  who  saw  that  poetry, 
which  should  be  the  delight  of  all,  was  become 
an  unknown  tongue  to  the  multitude.  And 
later  the  voices  become  more  passionate  and 
wilder  and  bitterer.  They  are  the  voices  of 
Byron,  who  saw  the  foreign  king,  that  royal 
lunatic,  and  his  drunken  but  jovial  son,  and  the 
bought-and-sold  politicians  who  ran  the  country, 
for  what  they  were,  and  mocked  them.  And 
the  voice  of  Shelley,  who  cried  to  the  men  of 
England  to  shake  themselves  free,  and  the 


8  The  War  and  the  Future 

voice  of  Carlyle,  who  saw  no  hope  anywhere 
but  in  the  drill  sergeant,  and  the  voice  of  Rus- 
kin,  who  saw  no  hope  anywhere  but  in  the 
coming  back  of  St.  George. 

There  was  only  one  question  to  those  men, 
the-condition-of-England  question.  Thinking 
men  might  justly  be  proud  of  certain  achieve- 
ments in  those  years,  many  things  were  invented, 
many  things  were  thought  out,  great  books  were 
written,  and  the  world  was  charted  and  navi- 
gated and  exploited,  but  there  was  no  peace  in 
that  England  for  the  men  with  souls  to  be 
saved. 

The  machine  worked,  it  did  great  things,  men 
could  point  to  its  results,  but  the  great  men,  the 
seeing  men,  were  unanimous  that  England  was 
not  a  merry  England  for  rich  or  poor.  It  was 
still  a  land  where  there  was  kindness  and  man- 
liness and  a  love  of  life  and  sport  and  country. 
But  with  this,  there  was  an  apathy  to  things 
which  were  vital  and  kindling.  The  nation  was 
drunken,  and  that  was  looked  on  with  apathy, 
the  nation  had  ceased  to  care,  as  it  once  had 
cared,  with  a  most  noble,  intense,  and  pas- 
sionate pride,  for  things  of  beauty  and  of  style, 
in  life,  and  art  and  music  and  the  means  of 
living.  And  this  deadness  and  apathy  and  stu- 


The  War  and  the  Future  9 

pidity  were  become  even  matters  of  pride  to 
some.  Then  the  nation,  with  all  its  wealth,  was 
an  ill-taught,  an  ill-fed,  and  an  ill-clad  nation, 
so  that  in  every  city  in  the  land  a  vast  number 
of  souls  were  ignorant,  and  a  vast  number  of 
bodies  had  not  enough  to  eat  nor  enough  to  put 
on.  And  the  rich,  who  owned  the  wealth,  had 
lost  the  old  English  sense  of  splendour  of  life. 
They  watched  the  beggary  and  the  drunkenness 
with  apathy.  They  watched  the  waste  and  the 
degradation  of  genius  without  lifting  a  finger. 
One  of  the  most  delicate  silversmiths  of  our 
time  died  of  consumption  as  a  seller  of  cat's 
meat.  One  of  our  most  delicate  lyric  poets 
died  of  consumption  as  a  seller  of  matches  in 
the  street.  Not  all  the  efforts  of  all  the  writers 
of  England  could  get  a  theatre  for  the  fit  and 
frequent  playing  of  Shakespeare.  Not  all  the 
wealth  nor  all  the  industry  could  reduce  the 
paupers  of  England,  the  men  and  women  who 
could  not  make  a  living,  to  less  than  a  mil- 
lion in  the  year. 

So  that,  early  in  1914,  England  was  a 
troubled  and  yet  an  apathetic  country,  with 
small  minorities  breaking  their  hearts  and  some- 
times people's  windows  in  an  effort  to  bring 
about  a  change,  and  with  a  vast,  powerful,  un- 


IO  The  War  and  the  Future 

thinking  selfish  weight  of  prejudice  and  priv- 
ilege keeping  things  in  the  old  ruts  and  the  old 
grooves  laid  down  by  the  foreign  king  a  cen- 
tury and  a  half  before. 

And  yet,  with  it  all,  there  was  immense  virtue 
in  the  land.  Work  was  well  done.  English 
goods  were  well  made.  And  we  were  not 
afraid  to  let  any  nation  compete  with  us  in  the 
open  market.  The  nations  could  sell  their 
goods  in  our  markets  on  equal  terms.  We  had 
no  quarrel  with  any  one.  We  wished  to  show 
that  we  had  no  quarrel  with  any  one.  During 
the  years  before  the  war,  we  increased  our 
Navy,  so  that  no  enemy  should  attack  us  with 
impunity,  but  we  reduced  our  tiny  army  by  some 
divisions,  and  our  auxiliary  army  by  an  army 
corps. 

People  say  now  that  we  were  wrong.  We 
may  have  been.  At  any  rate,  we  did  the  gen- 
erous thing,  and  I  don't  know  that  the  gen- 
erous thing  is  ever  wrong.  And  in  any  case, 
we  have  paid  the  price. 

In  the  first  week  of  July,  1914,  I  was  in  an 
old  house  in  Berkshire,  a  house  built  eight 
centuries  before  by  the  monks,  as  a  place  of 
rest  and  contemplation  and  beauty.  I  had 
never  seen  England  so  beautiful  as  then,  and  a 


The  War  and  the  Future  n 

little  company  of  lovely  friends  was  there. 
Rupert  Brooke  was  one  of  them,  and  we  read 
poems  in  that  old  haunt  of  beauty,  and  wan- 
dered on  the  Downs.  I  remember  saying  that 
the  Austro-Serbian  business  might  cause  a  Eu- 
ropean war,  in  which  we  might  be  involved,  but 
the  others  did  not  think  this  likely;  they 
laughed. 

Then  came  more  anxious  days,  and  then  a 
week  of  terror,  and  then  good-bye  to  that  old 
life,  and  my  old  home  in  Berkshire  was  a  billet 
for  cavalry,  and  their  chargers  drank  at  the 
moat.  I  saw  them  there.  And  the  next  time 
I  saw  them  they  were  in  Gallipoli,  lying  in  rank 
in  the  sand  under  Chocolate  Hill,  and  Rupert 
was  in  his  grave  in  Skyros. 

We  were  at  war.  We  were  at  war  with  the 
greatest  military  power  in  the  world.  We  had 
an  army  of  about  180,000  men,  scattered  all 
over  the  world,  to  pit  against  an  army  of  five 
or  six  millions  of  men,  already  concentrated. 
We  had,  suddenly,  at  a  day's  notice,  with  the 
knife  at  our  throats,  to  make  an  army  of  six 
or  seven  million  of  men,  and  we  had  perhaps 
trained  officers  enough  for  an  army  of  300,000. 
We  had  to  enlist,  house,  tent,  train  and  officer 
that  army.  We  had  to  buy  its  horses  and 


12  The  War  and  the  Future 

mules,  build  its  cars  and  wagons  and  travelling 
kitchens.  We  had  to  make  its  uniforms  and 
straps,  blankets,  boots  and  knapsacks;  and, 
worst  of  all,  we  had  to  make  its  weapons. 

We  had  the  plant  for  making  (I  suppose)  50 
big  guns  and  500  machine  guns  and  50,000 
rifles  in  the  year,  with  proportionate  ammuni- 
tion. Suddenly  we  wanted  50,000  big  guns, 
and  500,000  machine  guns  and  10,000,000 
rifles  with  unlimited  ammunition,  more  ammu- 
nition than  men  could  dream  of,  with  all  sorts 
of  new  kinds  of  ammunition,  bombs,  hand- 
grenades,  aerial  torpedoes,  or  flying  pigs,  flying 
pineapples,  egg-bombs,  hairbrush-bombs,  Mills 
bombs,  trench  mortar  bombs,  such  as  men  had 
never  used.  And  those  things  were  wanted  in 
a  desperate  hurry  and  we  had  the  plant  for  not 
one-fiftieth  part  of  them,  nor  the  workmen  to 
use  the  plant  when  made,  nor  the  workmen  to 
make  the  plant. 

It  is  said  that  it  takes  one  year  to  make  the 
plant  for  the  making  of  the  modern  big  gun, 
and  to  train  the  workmen  to  make  the  countless 
delicate  machines  with  which  men  kill  each  other 
in  modern  war.  That  was  the  proposition  we 
were  up  against,  and  meanwhile,  just  across  the 
water,  well  within  earshot  of  our  eastern  coun- 


The  War  and  tine  Future  13 

ties,  the  enemy,  like  an  armed  burglar,  was 
breaking  into  our  neighbours'  house,  and  killing 
our  neighbours'  children,  taking  his  goods,  abus- 
ing his  women  and  burning  the  house  over  the 
victims. 

In  the  first  eight  days  of  the  war  we  sent  two- 
thirds  of  our  little  army  to  France  (about 
120,000  men  all  told).  They  marched  up  to 
take  position,  singing,  "  It's  a  long,  long  way 
to  Tipperary."  It  was  not  to  be  a  long  way  to 
those  brave  men,  for  half  of  them  were  gone 
within  eight  weeks.  They  were  not  too  well- 
equipped  with  guns,  nor  had  they  many  machine 
guns,  but  every  man  in  the  army  was  a  very 
carefully  trained  rifle-shot.  Against  them  came 
enemy  armies  numbering  nearly  half  a  million 
of  men. 

They  came  into  touch  on  August  23rd,  near 
Mons,  against  odds  of  five  or  six  to  one. 
They  were  driven  back,  of  course.  That  little 
line  was  turned  and  almost  enveloped.  There 
has  been  little  fighting  in  this  war  to  equal  that 
first  fighting.  But  one  man  cannot  fight  six 
men :  so  our  army  fell  back,  fighting  desperately, 
in  hot  weather,  for  nine  days. 

Often  in  that  blazing  weather,  divisions  were 
so  footsore  that  they  could  go  no  farther. 


14  The  War  and  the  Future 

Then  they  would  take  position  and  lie  down  and 
fight.  The  only  rest  they  had  was  when  they 
could  lie  down  to  fight.  And  at  night,  when 
they  got  to  their  bleeding  feet  again  and 
plodded  on  in  the  dark,  a  sort  of  refrain  passed 
from  rank  to  rank,  u  We're  the  bloody  rear- 
guard, and  bloody  rearguards  don't  eat  and 
bloody  rearguards  don't  sleep,  but  we're  up, 
we're  up,  we're  up  the  blooming  spout." 

They  fell  back  for  nine  days  and  nights,  till 
the  enemy  was  at  the  gates  of  Paris,  and  the 
Allied  cause  seemed  lost.  You  know  how  the 
enemy  swept  into  Belgium  and  into  Northern 
France,  with  his  myriads  of  picked  men,  his 
aeroplanes  and  overwhelming  numbers  of  guns. 
They  marched  singing  and  they  came  on  like  a 
tide,  supping  up  cities,  Liege,  Namur,  Mons, 
Cambrai,  as  though  they  were  the  sea  itself. 
They  beat  back  everything.  The  French  were 
not  ready,  the  Belgians  were  only  a  handful,  we 
were  only  a  handful.  And  then,  when  they 
were  at  the  gates  of  Paris,  the  miracle  hap- 
pened. That  great  army  outran  its  supplies. 
It  advanced  so  swiftly  that  the  heavy  loads  of 
shells  could  not  keep  pace  with  it.  Then  in 
September,  1914,  that  great  calm  soldier  Mar- 
shal Joffre  wrote  those  words  which  will  be 


The  War  and  the  Future  15 

remembered  as  long  as  this  war  is  remembered : 
"  The  time  has  come  for  going  back  no  further, 
but  to  die  where  you  stand  if  you  cannot  ad- 
vance." Then  came  the  battle  of  the  Marne, 
and  people  knew  that  whatever  happened  there 
would  be  no  overwhelming  victory  for  the 
enemy.  He  was  beaten  and  had  to  fall  back 
to  gather  strength  for  another  effort,  and  all 
his  dreams  of  sudden  conquest  collapsed. 

But  though  our  armies  won  at  the  Marne,  it 
was  only  by  miracle;  and  the  essence  of  miracles 
is  that  they  are  not  repeated.  Our  side  was 
not  ready  for  war.  We  were  weaker  than  the 
enemy  in  guns,  men  and  equipment.  Our  task 
was  still  to  hold  the  line  somehow,  with- 
out guns,  and  almost  without  men,  but 
by  bluff  and  barbed  wire,  while  guns  could 
be  forged  and  men  trained.  The  enemy 
was  ready  for  a  second  spring  long  before  we 
were  ready  to  resist  him,  and  this  second  spring 
was  not  to  fail,  as  the  Marne  had  failed, 
through  want  of  munitions. 

This  second  spring  took  place  at  the  end  of 
October,  1914,  when  we  had  lost  about  half  our 
original  army  and  had  altogether  about  100,000 
men  in  the  line,  many  of  them  drafts  who  had 
not  had  one  month's  training.  This  100,000 


1 6  The  War  and  the  Future 

were  outgunned  and  outnumbered.  All  are 
agreed  that  the  enemy  brought  against  that 
100,000  not  less  than  six  times  its  strength,  and 
the  battle  that  followed  (the  first  battle  of 
Ypres)  lasted  for  twenty-seven  days  and  nights 
of  continuous  and  bloody  fighting.  To  this  day 
no  soldier  can  understand  why  the  enemy 
didn't  break  through.  Our  line  was  so  thinly 
held  that  in  many  places  there  were  no  supports 
and  no  reliefs  of  any  kind,  and  the  men  stayed 
in  the  trenches  till  they  were  killed  or  wounded. 
That  little  and  weary  army  underwent  a  test 
such  as  no  other  army  has  had  to  stand.  The 
enemy  shelled  our  line,  with  a  great  concentra- 
tion of  guns,  and  attacked  with  a  great  concen- 
tration of  men,  and  broke  the  line  at  Gheluvelt, 
near  Ypres.  It  has  been  thought  by  some  that 
the  enemy  had  only  to  advance  to  crumple  the 
whole  army;  and  destroy  the  Allied  Cause. 
And  then  two  men  (according  to  the  story) 
saved  the  issue.  Two  English  soldiers,  named 
Pugh  and  Black,  gathered  up  small  parties  of 
men,  regimental  cooks  and  servants,  stretcher 
bearers,  and  walking  wounded,  and  held  the 
enemy  in  check,  till  what  was  left  of  the  Worces- 
ter Battalion,  about  four  hundred  men,  could 
be  put  in  to  retake  the  village.  Those  four 


The  War  and  the  Future  17 

hundred  men  saved  the  line  and  prevented  a 
defeat.  Our  generals  were  writing  an  order 
for  retreat  when  a  staff  officer  came  galloping 
up  to  them,  in  wild  excitement,  and  without  a 
hat,  to  shout  out  that  the  Worcesters  had  re- 
stored the  line. 

In  that  most  bloody  battle  of  "  First  Ypres," 
one  English  battalion  was  obliterated,  another 
was  remade  two  and  a  half  times  between  Oc- 
tober and  Christmas,  a  third,  which  went  in 
987  strong,  came  out  70  strong;  in  a  fourth,  an 
officer  who  returned  to  duty  after  two  months 
in  hospital,  found  only  one  man  left  who  had 
been  in  the  battalion  two  months  before;  all  the 
rest  had  gone. 

After  that  battle,  the  mud  set  in,  and  stopped 
all  great  movements  of  men  and  guns.  Both 
sides  dug  and  fortified  the  lines  they  were  hold- 
ing, and  the  war  became  an  affair  of  siege,  until 
the  spring. 

Then  the  enemy  launched  a  third  attack 
against  us,  which  was  by  much  the  most  dan- 
gerous attack  of  the  early  months  of  the  war. 
He  began  this  attack  by  an  intense  bombard- 
ment of  the  English  and  French  lines  near 
Ypres.  Then,  at  nightfall,  in  the  April  even- 
ing, while  this  bombardment  was  at  its  height, 


1 8  The  War  and  the  Future 

he  let  loose  a  great  green  cloud  of  chlorine  gas, 
which  floated  across  the  No  Man's  Land  to  our 
lines.  Wherever  this  gas  reached  the  lines  it 
choked  the  men  dead,  by  a  death  which  is  un- 
speakably terrible,  even  for  this  war. 

The  men  watched  the  gas  coming.  They 
thought  that  it  was  a  smoke-screen  or  barrage, 
designed  to  hide  the  advance  of  enemy  infantry. 
Suddenly  they  found  the  green  cloud  upon  them, 
and  their  comrades  choking  and  retching  their 
lives  away  in  every  kind  of  agony.  For  a 
while  there  was  a  panic.  The  men  in  the  front 
lines  were  either  killed  or  put  out  of  action. 
The  communication  trenches  were  filled  with 
choking  and  gasping  men,  flying  from  the  terror 
and  dropping  as  they  fled.  Night  was  falling. 
It  was  nearly  dark,  and  the  whole  area  was 
under  an  intense  enemy  shell-fire.  The  line 
was  broken  on  a  front  of  four  and  a  half  miles; 
and  for  the  time  it  seemed  as  though  the  whole 
front  would  go. 

The  gas  had  come  just  at  the  point  where  the 
French  and  the  English  armies  joined  each 
other;  at  a  point,  that  is,  where  all  words  of 
command  had  to  be  given  in  several  languages, 
and  where  any  confusion  was  certain  to  be  in- 
tensified tenfold;  there  were  many  Colonial  and 


The  War  and  the  Future  19 

native  troops  there,  Turcos,  Indians,  Senega- 
lese, Moroccans,  as  well  as  Canadians,  French 
and  English.  All  the  troops  there  were  shaken 
by  this  unexpected  and  terrible  death,  against 
which  they  had  no  guard. 

Then  a  few  officers,  whose  names,  perhaps, 
we  may  never  know,  gathered  together  the 
stragglers  and  the  panic-stricken,  and  called  to 
them  to  put  handkerchiefs  and  caps  and  rags  of 
blankets  and  strips  of  shirt  in  front  of  their 
faces,  and  with  these  as  respirators  they 
marched  the  men  back  into  that  cloud  of  death, 
and  though  many  were  killed  in  the  attempt, 
enough  survived  to  hold  the  line,  and  so  we 
were  saved  for  the  third  time. 

All  nations  use  gas  now,  but  that  was  the 
first  time  it  was  used.  It  is  a  very  terrible 
thing.  I  have  seen  many  men  dying  of  it.  It 
rots  the  lungs  and  the  victims  gasp  away  their 
lives.  There  is  a  saying,  "  If  you  sell  your 
soul  to  the  Devil,  be  sure  you  get  a  good  price." 
The  use  of  that  gas  was  a  selling  of  the  soul, 
and  yet  the  price  gotten  in  exchange  was  noth- 
ing. They  had  our  line  broken  with  it  and  for 
weeks  they  could  have  beaten  us  by  it.  It  was 
weeks  before  our  men  had  proper  respirators 
in  any  number.  I  do  not  know  why  they  didn't 


2O  The  War  and  the  Future 

beat  us  then;  nobody  knows.  Some  think  that 
it  was  because  their  General  Staff  did  not  trust 
their  chemists. 

Just  at  the  time  when  the  gas  attack  was 
preparing  outside  Ypres,  a  little  army  of  the 
Allies  was  landing  on  the  Gallipoli  Peninsula, 
"  to  assist  the  passage  of  the  fleets  through  the 
Dardanelles." 

I  have  been  asked  about  the  Gallipoli  cam- 
paign. People  have  complained  to  me  that  it 
was  a  blunder.  I  don't  agree.  It  had  to  be 
undertaken;  to  keep  Bulgaria  quiet,  to  keep 
Greece  from  coming  in  against  us,  to  protect 
Egypt  and  to  draw  the  Turkish  Army  from 
the  Caucasus,  where  Russia  was  hard  pressed. 
People  say,  "  Well,  at  least  it  was  a  blunder  to 
attack  in  the  way  you  did."  I  say  that  when 
we  did  attack,  we  attacked  with  the  only  men 
and  the  only  weapons  we  had,  and  in  the  only 
possible  places. 

In  war  one  has  to  attempt  many  things,  not 
because  they  are  wise  or  likely  to  succeed,  but 
because  they  have  to  be  done.  In  this  war,  we 
had  to  attempt  them  with  insufficient  means,  be- 
cause we  were  unprepared  for  war. 

Consider  what  that  attempt  meant. 

In  the  original  scheme,  the  Russians  were  to 


The  War  and  the  Future  21 

co-operate  with  us,  by  landing  40,000  men  on 
the  shores  of  the  Bosphorus,  so  as  to  divert 
from  us  a  large  force  of  enemy  soldiers.  We 
brought  our  men  3,000  miles  across  the  sea, 
and  we  said  to  them,  in  effect,  "  There  are  the 
Turks,  entrenched,  with  machine  guns  and  guns 
and  shells.  You  have  only  rifles.  We  have  no 
guns  nor  shells  to  give  you.  Now  land  on 
those  mined  beaches,  and  take  those  trenches. 
The  Russians  will  help  to  some  extent;  it  will 
not  be  so  hard."  So  the  men  went  ashore  and 
took  those  trenches.  Nine  days  after  they  were 
ashore,  we  learned  that  the  Russians  could  not 
land  any  men  on  the  Bosphorus,  and  that  we 
were  alone  in  the  venture.  And  then  we  said 
to  our  survivors,  "  The  Russians  can't  come  to 
help  you,  after  all.  We  have  no  guns  nor 
shells  to  give  you.  We  are  so  hard  pressed  in 
France  that  we  can't  send  you  any  reinforce- 
ments. The  enemy  is  entrenched  with  plenty 
of  guns,  and  lots  of  shells,  but  you've  got  rifles, 
so  go  and  take  those  trenches,  too."  So  the 
men  went  and  took  them.  Then  we  said,  in 
effect,  "  Men  and  guns  are  needed  in  France, 
we  can't  send  you  any  more  just  yet."  So 
everything  was  delayed,  till  the  men  and  guns 
were  ready,  and  then,  when  they  were  ready,  the 


22  The  War  and  the  Future 

enemy  was  ready,  too,  and  dysentery  was  rag- 
ing and  it  was  very  hot,  and  there  was  little  to 
drink,  and  it  is  a  God  forgotten  land  to  fight  in, 
so  we  did  not  win  the  Peninsula,  nor  anything 
else,  except  honor  from  thinking  men. 

I  know  that  every  man  who  was  in  Gallipoli, 
is  and  will  be  prouder  of  having  been  there, 
than  of  anything  in  his  life,  past,  present,  or  to 
come.  Our  men  kept  a  flag  flying  there  to 
which  the  beaten  men  of  all  time  will  turn  in 
trial. 

As  you  know,  in  1915,  the  war  settled  down 
into  a  struggle  between  opposing  lines  of 
trenches,  with  daily  shelling  and  sniping  and  oc- 
casional raiding,  mining  and  bombing.  The 
next  great  attack  was  the  attack  on  Verdun, 
when  the  enemy  launched  an  army  of  specially 
fed,  trained  and  rested  soldiers,  under  a  hail 
of  shells,  to  break  through  the  French  lines. 
That  attack  lasted  with  little  intermission  for 
four  months,  and  it  did  not  break  the  line.  It 
very  nearly  broke  it,  but  not  quite.  Perhaps 
nothing  can  break  the  line  of  a  free  people 
sworn  to  hold  the  gates  for  freedom.  Often 
in  that  fight,  little  bodies  of  French  and  German 
soldiers  were  shut  off  for  days  together  by  shell- 
fire,  men  died  from  hunger  and  thirst  in  the 


The  War  and  the  Future  23 

wreck  of  the  forts,  and  those  parties  of  French 
and  Germans  would  count  heads  to  see  which 
side  had  won. 

And  while  the  attack  was  at  its  height,  and 
while  Verdun  was  still  in  danger,  the  English 
and  French  together  counter-attacked  in  force 
on  a  line  of  25  miles,  further  to  the  north,  in 
the  Department  of  the  Somme,  and  beat  the 
enemy  out  of  his  main  position  there.  That 
put  an  end  to  the  attack  on  Verdun.  The  bat- 
tle of  the  Somme  gave  another  use  for  the 
enemy's  men  and  guns.  The  city  was  saved. 
And  a  great  deal  more  than  the  city;  for  the 
battle  of  the  Somme  beat  the  enemy  out  of  a 
strip  of  France  65  miles  long  by  from  12  to  20 
deep,  where  today  the  great  battle  of  this  war 
is  being  fought. 

This  Battle  of  the  Somme  was  an  attack  upon 
some  of  the  most  elaborate  field  fortifications 
ever  made.  On  the  right  of  the  attack,  where 
the  French  attacked,  much  of  the  ground  is  flat, 
and  without  good  defensive  position,  but  on 
the  left,  where  the  English  attacked,  the 
ground  is  a  succession  of  rolling  chalk  down- 
land,  rising  some  hundreds  of  feet  above  little 
valleys.  On  this  rolling  downland,  the  enemy 
had  dug  himself  in,  when  he  was  strong  and 


24  The  War  and  the  Future 

we  were  weak.  He  had  made  himself  so 
strong  there,  that  he  openly  boasted  that  his 
position  was  impregnable.  He  had  all  the 
good  positions  there.  His  line  was  so  placed, 
that  it  was  almost  always  a  little  above  us,  and 
he  worked  to  improve  these  positions  night  and 
day  for  nearly  two  years. 

Perhaps  not  many  here  have  seen  a  first  rate 
enemy  field  fortification.  I'll  try  to  explain 
what  the  Somme  position  was  like. 

As  you  know,  the  main  defence  in  a  modern 
line  is  the  front  line  system  of  trenches. 

In  front  of  his  front  line,  the  enemy  had  a 
very  elaborate  strong  tangle  of  wire,  about  4 
feet  high  and  40  yards  across,  each  wire  as 
thick  as  a  double  rope  yarn  and  with  16  barbs 
to  the  foot. 

Hidden  in  this  wire,  under  the  ground,  in 
converted  shell  holes,  or  in  very  cunningly  con- 
trived little  pits,  were  stations  for  machine  gun- 
ners. Some  of  these  stations  were  connected 
with  the  enemy  trenches  by  tunnels,  so  that  the 
gunners  could  crawl  to  them  under  cover. 

In  some  places,  the  ground  of  the  wire  en- 
tanglement was  strewn  with  trip  wire,  so  near 
the  ground  as  to  be  invisible,  yet  high  enough 
to  catch  the  feet.  In  the  trip  wire  were  spikes 


The  War  and  tine  Future  25 

to  transfix  the  men  who  caught  in  the  trip  wire 
and  fell. 

Behind  the  wire  tangle  were  the  enemy  first 
line  trenches. 

These  were  immense  works,  designed  as  per- 
manent field  fortresses.  They  were  always 
well  made  and  well  sited.  In  many  important 
points  of  the  line  they  were  twelve  feet  deep, 
and  strongly  revetted  with  plank  and  wicker. 
At  intervals  of  about  50  yards,  in  some  parts  of 
the  line,  were  little  concrete  forts  for  observers 
and  machine  guns.  These  forts  were  so  well 
concealed  that  they  could  not  be  seen  from 
without.  The  slit  for  the  observer  or  for  the 
machine  gun  to  fire  through  is  very  tiny,  and 
well  hidden  in  the  mud  of  the  trench  para- 
pet. 

These  forts  were  immensely  strong,  and  very 
small.  A  man  inside  one  could  only  be  de- 
stroyed by  the  direct  hit  of  a  big  shell  or  by  the 
lucky  chance  of  a  bullet  coming  through  the  nar- 
row slit.  You  must  remember  that  one  cool 
soldier  with  a  machine  gun  has  in  his  hands  the 
concentrated  destructive  power  of  40  or  50  rifle 
men. 

In  the  wall  of  the  trench  parapets  on  this 
front  line,  at  intervals  of  30  to  40  yards,  were 


26  The  War  and  the  Future 

shafts  of  stairs  leading  down  20  or  30  feet  into 
the  earth.  At  the  bottom  of  the  shafts  were 
great  underground  living  rooms,  each  big 
enough  to  hold  50  or  100  men.  In  some  places 
shafts  led  down  another  20  feet  below  these 
living  rooms  to  a  second  level  or  storey  of  dug- 
outs. 

These  places  were  fairly  safe  in  normal 
times,  though  apt  to  be  foul  and  ill  smelling. 
In  bombardments  the  men  kept  below  in  the 
dugouts,  out  of  danger  from  the  shells,  till  the 
instant  of  the  attack,  when  they  could  race  up 
the  stairs  in  time  to  man  the  fire  step,  and  to 
get  their  machine  guns  into  action.  During  the 
intense  bombardments,  the  shafts  and  stairs 
were  blown  in,  and  a  good  many  of  the  enemy 
were  buried  alive  in  these  dugouts.  Our  men, 
when  they  had  captured  these  trenches,  usually 
preferred  to  sleep  in  the  trenches,  not  in  the 
dugouts,  as  they  said  that  they  would  rather 
be  killed  outright  than  buried  alive. 

In  some  parts  of  the  battlefield  of  the 
Somme,  the  ground  is  channelled  with  deep, 
steep-sided,  narrow  gullies  in  the  chalk,  some- 
times 40  feet  deep  and  only  40  feet  across, 
like  great  natural  trenches.  Three  of  these 
gullies  were  made  into  enemy  arsenals  and  bar- 


The  War  and  the  Future  27 

racks  of  immense  strength  and  capacity.  These 
were,  the  tunnel  at  St.  Pierre  Divion,  dug  into 
the  chalk,  so  that  some  thousands  of  men  could 
live  under  ground  within  one-quarter  mile  of  the 
front  line,  in  perfect  safety;  the  barracks  at  the 
Y  Ravine,  about  a  mile  further  north,  and  the 
barracks  in  Quarry  Gulley,  near  the  Y  Ravine. 
In  all  these  immense  underground  works,  the 
enemy  had  elaborate  homes,  lit  with  electricity, 
hung  with  cretonne  and  panelled  with  wood. 
Little  stairs  led  from  these  dwellings  to  neat 
machine  gun  posts  overlooking  the  front  line. 
In  one  of  these  elaborate  underground  dwell- 
ings there  were  cots  for  children  and  children's 
toys,  and  some  lady's  clothes.  It  was  thought 
that  the  artillery  general  who  lived  there  had 
had  his  family  there  for  the  week  end. 

Behind  all  these  works,  were  support  and  re- 
serve trenches  of  equal  strength,  often  fully 
wired  in,  but  with  fewer  dugouts.  Then  about 
a  mile  or  two  miles  behind  the  front  line,  on  a 
great  crest  or  table  of  high  chalk  downland, 
was  the  second  line,  stronger  than  the  front 
line,  on  even  more  difficult  ground,  where  you 
cannot  walk  a  yard  without  treading  on  dust 
of  English  blood. 

Words  cannot  describe  the  strength  of  that 


28  The  War  and  the  future 

old  fortified  line.  It  was  done  with  the  greatest 
technical  skill.  If  you  went  along  it,  you 
would  notice  here  and  there  some  little  irregu- 
larity or  strangeness,  and  then  you  would  look 
about,  till  you  could  see  what  devilish  purpose 
that  little  strangeness  served.  And  there  was 
always  one.  The  little  irregularity  gave  some 
little  advantage,  which  might  make  all  the  dif- 
ference in  a  battle.  The  little  thing  in  war  al- 
ters the  destinies  of  nations.  A  grain  of  sand 
in  the  body  of  Napoleon  altered  the  campaign 
of  1 8 1 2.  I  know  of  one  great  and  tragical  bat- 
tle in  this  war  which  was  lost  mainly  through 
a  sprained  ankle. 

Our  old  lines  faced  these  great  fortresses  at 
a  distance  of  about  200  yards.  Our  lines  are 
nothing  like  the  enemy  lines.  There  were  no 
deep  dugouts.  The  wire  was  comparatively 
slight.  The  trenches  were  inferior.  It  looked 
as  though  the  work  of  amateurs  was  pitted 
against  the  work  of  professionals.  Yet  the 
amateurs  held  the  professionals. 

When  Lord  Kitchener  went  to  Gallipoli,  he 
visited  Anzac.  At  that  time,  life  in  Gallipoli 
was  becoming  anxious,  because  some  ly-inch 
Skoda  guns  had  been  brought  down  by  the 
Turks  and  were  shelling  the  position.  Our 


The  War  and  the  Future  29 

men  had  dug  some  dugouts  10  or  15  feet  deep 
to  protect  them  from  these  shells.  They 
showed  them  to  Kitchener  with  pride.  Kitch- 
ener said,  "  Of  course,  they  may  do  for  Galli- 
poli,  but  they  aren't  nearly  deep  enough  for 
France.  We  never  go  down  less  than  30  feet 
in  France." 

So,  when  the  Peninsula  men  came  to  France, 
they  came  with  the  modest  feeling  that  they 
knew  nothing  about  modern  war,  nor  about 
digging  dugouts,  and  they  went  into  the  trenches 
expecting  to  see  dugouts  like  Egyptian  cata- 
combs. They  found  that  the  only  dugouts  were 
pieces  of  corrugated  iron  with  a  few  sand  bags 
on  the  top  and  some  shovelsful  of  mud  over  all. 

In  places  where  the  two  lines  approached 
each  other  at  a  crest,  there  had  been  a  two  years' 
struggle  for  the  possession  of  the  crest;  for 
modern  war  is  mainly  a  struggle  for  the  post 
from  which  one  can  see.  In  all  these  places 
the  space  between  the  lines  was  a  vast  and 
ghastly  succession  of  mine  pits,  fifty  or  a  hun- 
dred feet  deep,  marked  with  the  wrecks  of  old 
dugouts,  and  heads  and  hands  and  bodies,  and 
sometimes  half  full  of  evil  water. 

Within  the  16  mile  limit  of  the  English  sec- 
tor of  the  Somme  field,  there  were  in  the  enemy 


30  The  War  and  the  Future 

front    line    8    strongholds    which    the    enemy 
boasted  were  impregnable. 

The  Battle  of  the  Somme  was  the  first  real 
measuring  of  strength  between  the  enemy  and 
the  English.  In  the  early  battles,  the  picked 
men  of  our  race  had  met  their  picked  men  and 
held  them.  But  the  picked  men  were  now 
dead,  and  the  armies  which  fought  on  the 
Somme  were  the  average  mass  of  the  race. 

I  must  describe  the  Battle  of  the  Somme. 
On  the  right,  where  the  ground  is  flat  and  there 
is  no  real  defensive  position,  the  French  caught 
the  enemy  by  surprise,  officers  shaving  in  their 
dugouts,  men  at  breakfast,  gun  teams  going 
down  to  water.  The  French  made  a  royal  and 
victorious  advance  at  once. 

Our  men  attacking  the  strongholds  where  the 
enemy  expected  us,  lost  50,000  men  in  the  first 
day's  fighting  and  took  in  that  day,  the  first  of 
the  8  impregnable  forts. 

I  don't  think  you  realize  what  the  Battle  of 
the  Somme  became.  It  went  on  for  8  y*  months 
of  intense,  bloody  and  bitter  battles  for  small 
pieces  of  hill,  for  the  sites  of  vanished  villages, 


The  War  and  the  Future  31 

for  the  stumps  of  blasted  woods  and  the  cellars 
of  obliterated  farms. 

We  got  the  second  of  the  8  impregnable 
forts  on  the  fourth  day,  the  third  on  the  seven- 
teenth day,  the  fourth  and  fifth  on  the  seventy- 
sixth  day,  the  sixth  and  strongest  on  the  one 
hundred  and  twenty-eighth  day,  and  the  last  two 
at  the  end. 

I  cannot  tell  you  how  bitter  and  bloody  the 
fighting  in  that  battle  was.  The  fight  for  Del- 
ville  Wood  lasted  for  nearly  two  months,  and 
in  those  two  months,  400  shells  fell  every  min- 
ute on  Delville  Wood,  and  not  less  than  300,000 
men  were  killed  and  wounded  there.  That 
wood  during  the  battle  was  a  scene  of  death, 
bloodshed  and  smash  such  as  cannot  be  imag- 
ined. You  walked  in  the  mud  on  the  bones  and 
the  flesh  of  men  and  on  fresh  blood  dripping 
out  of  stretchers.  By  the  side  of  the  track  was 
a  poor  starved  cat  eating  the  brain  of  a  man. 

In  High  Wood  they  fought  till  the  rags  and 
bones  of  dead  men  hung  from  the  wrecks  of  the 
trees.  In  Pozieres,  men  lived  for  days  and 
nights  under  a  never  ceasing  barrage  designed 
to  blow  them  off  the  ridge  which  they  had  won. 
They  were  buried  and  unburied  and  reburied  by 


32  The  War  and  the  Future 

shells.  There  were  20,000  casualties  on  that 
ghastly  table,  and  the  shell-shock  cases  leaped 
and  shook  and  twittered  in  every  clearing  sta- 
tion. 

Twenty-thousand  men  were  killed  and 
wounded  in  the  taking  of  the  nest  of  machine 
guns  in  the  subterranean  fort  of  Mouquet  Farm. 
Our  men  went  down  into  the  shafts  of  that 
fort  and  fought  in  the  darkness  under  ground 
there,  till  the  passages  were  all  seamed  with 
bullets. 

We  lost  half  a  million  men  in  that  great  bat- 
tle, and  we  had  our  reward.  For  in  the  winter 
of  1917,  in  the  winter  night  a  great  and  shat- 
tering barrage  raged  up  along  the  front.  It 
was  the  barrage  which  covered  the  attack  on 
Miraumont  and  drove  the  enemy  from  the 
Ancre  Valley.  The  next  day  came  the  news 
that  Serre  had  fallen,  and  we  went  up  and  stood 
in  Serre.  And  Gommecourt  fell,  and  the  rain 
of  shells  ceased  upon  Loupart  and  La  Barque, 
and  the  news  ran  along  like  wildfire,  that  the 
enemy  was  going  back. 

It  was  a  soaking  thaw  after  frost,  and  the 
roads,  such  roads  as  remained,  were  over  ankle 
deep  in  mud,  and  our  muddy  army  got  up  from 
the  mud  and  went  forward  through  it. 


The  War  and  the  Future  33 

All  the  roads  leading  to  the  front  were 
thronged  by  our  army,  battalion  on  battalion, 
division  on  division,  guns  and  transport  columns, 
camp  kitchens,  and  artillery  transport,  going  up 
in  the  mud  after  the  enemy. 

You  could  see  them  bringing  the  railway  for- 
ward under  fire,  under  heavy  fire,  along  the 
Ancre  Valley.  They  made  the  railway  and 
the  road  side  by  side,  with  shells  falling  on 
them  and  the  stink  of  gas  blowing  over 
them.  And  not  a  man  died  there,  but  died  in 
exultation,  knowing  that  over  his  death  the 
army  was  passing  to  victory. 

Today,  as  you  know,  the  greatest  battle  of 
this  war  is  being  fought  on  that  ground.  And 
so  far,  as  you  know,  our  men  have  been  hard 
pressed  and  driven  back. 

It  is  not  easy  to  stand  here,  while  there,  over 
the  sea,  those  men  are  standing  in  the  mud, 
waiting  for  death  to  come  to  them. 

It  is  no  light  thing  to  face  death  in  a  modern 
battle,  to  have  been  living  in  the  mud,  on  scanty 
food,  with  no  rest,  in  all  the  terror  and  filth, 
among  the  blood,  the  rags  of  flesh,  the  half 
buried  bodies  half  eaten  with  rats,  the  crashing 
and  screaming  of  shells,  all  the  confusion  of  a 
stunt,  and  the  cries  for  stretcher  bearers.  Only 


34  The  War  and  the  Future 

two  things  are  any  help  in  the  battlefield,  cour- 
age and  the  comrade  beside  you. 

And  I  know  that  there  is  no  man  in  the 
French  and  English  armies  today,  standing-to 
in  the  mud,  waiting  for  death,  who  does  not 
stand  the  steadier  from  the  knowledge  that  this 
country  stands  behind  him,  and  that  the  men 
of  this  country  are  in  the  line  at  his  side. 

We  here  are  not  helping  in  the  fight;  but  we 
can  help  in  the  fight.  We  can  build  up  behind 
those  men  a  great  wall  of  love  and  admiration 
and  courage,  so  that  they  can  feel  it,  and  rest 
their  backs  against  it  when  they  are  hard 
pressed. 

It  is  as  well  to  face  the  facts  of  the  battle. 
We  have  lost  a  tract  of  France,  and  our  old 
graveyards  of  the  Somme,  our  huts  and  water- 
pipes,  some  guns  and  dumps  of  stores  and  a 
great  many  men. 

Fortune  is  like  that  in  war.  When  Cortes 
had  burnt  his  ships,  and  was  marching  into 
Mexico,  his  men  growled  that  they  had  a  hard 
time,  with  little  food  and  no  rest  and  bloody 
fighting.  And  Cortes  told  them  that  they 
didn't  come  there  to  eat  cakes  of  Utrera,  but 
to  take  their  luck  as  it  came  and  their  medicine 


The  War  and  the  Future  35 

as  it  tasted.  We  came  into  this  war  on  those 
terms;  so  did  you. 

I've  no  news  to  tell  you  and  no  comfort  to 
give  you.  The  enemy  had  more  aeroplanes 
than  we  had,  and  hid  his  preparations  from 
us.  He  made  a  big  concentration  of  men  and 
guns,  and  when  the  weather  favoured  him  he 
put  them  in,  with  skill  and  courage,  against  that 
part  of  the  line  where  there  are  no  good  natural 
defensive  positions.  He  took  the  5th  army  by 
surprise  and  drove  it  back.  As  it  fell  back, 
it  uncovered  the  right  of  the  3rd  army,  which 
held  the  good  defensive  positions.  The  3rd 
army  had  to  bend  back  in  conformity,  till  the 
two  armies  together  reached  some  sort  of  a 
line  which  could  be  held.  Then  the  enemy 
switched  his  divisions  north,  and  put  in  his  at- 
tack on  Ypres. 

He  was  able  to  do  this,  because  his  lateral 
communications,  behind  his  lines,  are  better 
than  ours.  People  may  ask,  in  some  surprise, 
"Why  are  they  better?"  They  are  better 
because  the  enemy  has  at  his  disposal  a  great 
body  of  slave  labour  which  we  have  not.  He 
has  the  enslaved  populations  of  Belgium,  North 
France  and  Poland  to  work  for  him. 


36  The  War  and  the  Future 

Then,  in  all  this  fighting,  our  armies  have 
been  outnumbered  by  the  enemy.  We  have 
had  concentrated  against  us  not  less  than  two 
millions  of  the  enemy.  People  have  asked,  in 
some  surprise,  "  How  comes  it,  that  you  have 
been  outnumbered?" 

We  have  been  outnumbered,  presumably  be- 
cause the  Allied  High  Command  has  judged, 
that  this  is  not  the  time  for  the  fighting  of  the 
decisive  battle  of  this  war,  and  that  the  line 
must  be  held  with  comparatively  few  troops  so 
that  the  reserves  for  the  decisive  battle  may  be 
as  large  as  possible. 

We  must  be  patient,  and  wait  for  the  counter, 
trusting  the  goodness  of  our  cause. 

But  in  thinking  of  British  man-power  you 
must  remember  that  though  all  the  belligerent 
countries  have  to  reckon  with  three  big  armies, 
we  have  to  reckon  with  seven.  All  belligerent 
countries  have  to  reckon  with  their  army  of  the 
living,  their  army  of  the  wounded,  and  their 
army  of  the  dead.  We  have  to  reckon  all 
these,  and  our  armies  of  the  dead  and  wounded 
would  alone  mount  up  to  nearly  2^2  millions 
of  men.  But  we  have  also  to  maintain  four 
armies  which  the  other  belligerent  countries 
do  not  have  to  have. 


The  War  and  the  Future  37 

First,  an  army  of  defence,  against  invasion. 
This  is  a  small  army  consisting  mainly  of 
elderly  men  and  of  lads  in  training.  We  have 
to  maintain  it;  it  may  be  necessary;  and  "  it  is 
better  to  be  sure  than  sorry." 

Then  we  have  armies  abroad  in  distant  parts 
of  this  war,  the  army  in  Italy,  the  army  in  Sa- 
lonika, and  the  big  garrisons  in  India  and  Egypt 
which  feed  the  armies  in  Mesopotamia  and  in 
Palestine.  All  of  these  armies  and  garrisons 
melt  away  continually  in  the  fire  of  war,  and 
everywhere  on  the  roads  to  those  armies,  are 
the  reinforcements  and  the  drafts  swallowing 
up  more  and  yet  more  men. 

In  Gibraltar,  and  Malta  and  Alexandria  and 
Port  Said,  you  will  see,  every  day,  some  ship 
filled  with  our  men  going  out  to  death  in  those 
far  fields,  and  you  will  see  the  men  standing  on 
the  deck  and  cheering,  as  the  ship  draws  away 
and  leaves  home  and  sweetness  and  pleasant 
life  behind,  for  ever. 

"Then,  besides  these,  we  have  the  army  of 
the  sick.  The  great  epidemical  scourges  of 
ancient  armies  have  been  nearly  eliminated 
from  this  war;  but  we  have  been  forced  to 
maintain  armies  in  distant  outposts  of  this  war, 
in  Gallipoli,  in  Salonika,  and  in  Mesopotamia 


38  The  War  and  the  Future 

where  the  men  have  suffered  much  from  trop- 
ical diseases,  dysentery  and  malarial  fever. 
We  have  some  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men 
who  have  been  weakened  by  these  complaints; 
not  wrecked  by  them,  but  so  weakened  that 
they  cannot  stand  the  life  in  the  trenches. 

And  besides  all  those  armies,  we  have  a  vast 
army  of  the  very  flower  of  our  race,  both  men 
and  women.  It  may  consist  of  four  or  five 
millions  of  men  and  women  who  work  in  treble 
shifts,  day  and  night,  as  they  have  worked  for 
the  last  three  years,  making  the  things  of  war, 
not  only  for  ourselves  but  for  our  Allies.  Our 
Allies  are  not  manufacturing  people.  Russia 
made  few  things,  France's  coal  and  steel  are  in 
the  hands  of  the  enemy,  Italy  makes  few  things. 
We  have  had  to  supply  these  people  not  only 
with  equipment  of  all  kinds,  guns,  clothing  and 
shells,  but  with  ships  and  coal.  Not  less  than 
half  a  million  men  have  done  nothing  in  England 
since  the  war  began  but  get  and  ship  coal  for 
the  Allies.  They  have  sent  not  less  than  60 
million  tons  of  coal  to  the  Allies  since  the  war 
began. 

Then  a  part  of  that  army  builds  ships,  and 
ever  more  ships,  and  yet  never  enough  ships  for 


The  War  and  the  Future  39 

the  needs  of  this  great  war  and  for  the  sup- 
ply of  our  friends. 

The  enemy  spreads  abroad  lies  concerning 
us.  I  am  not  going  to  answer  them.  Lies  do 
not  last  long. 

There  is  no  need  to  lie  about  a  people.  Still 
less  is  there  any  need  to  lay  claim  to  this  or 
that  glory.  No  nation  is  so  bad  that  it  has 
not  something  very  good  in  it;  and  none  so 
glorious  that  it  has  not  some  taint  of  self. 

And  I'm  not  here  to  sing  my  country's 
praises.  No  one  will  do  that.  Patriotism,  as 
I  see  it,  is  not  a  fine  drawing  of  the  sword,  be- 
hind some  winged  and  glittering  Victory.  It  is 
nothing  at  all  of  all  that.  It  is  a  very  sad  thing 
and  a  very  deep  thing  and  a  very  stern  thing. 

St.  George  did  not  go  out  against  the  dragon 
like  that  divine  calm  youth  in  Carpaccio's  pic- 
ture, nor  like  that  divine  calm  man  in  Dona- 
tello's  statue.  He  went  out,  I  think,  after 
some  taste  of  defeat,  knowing  that  it  was  going 
to  be  bad,  and  that  the  dragon  would  breathe 
fire  and  that  very  likely  his  spear  would  break 
and  that  he  wouldn't  see  his  children  again  and 
people  would  call  him  a  fool.  He  went  out, 
I  think,  as  the  battalions  of  our  men  went  out, 


40  The  War  and  the  Future 

a  little  trembling  and  a  little  sick  and  not  know- 
ing much  about  it,  except  that  it  had  to  be 
done,  and  then  stood  up  to  the  dragon  in  the 
mud  of  that  far  land,  and  waited  for  him  to 
come  on. 

I  know  what  England  was,  before  the  war. 
She  was  a  nation  which  had  outgrown  her  ma- 
chine, a  nation  which  had  forgotten  her  soul,  a 
nation  which  had  destroyed  Jerusalem  among 
her  dark  Satanic  mills. 

And  then,  at  a  day's  notice,  at  the  blowing  of 
a  horn,  at  the  cry  from  a  little  people  in  dis- 
tress, all  that  was  changed,  and  she  re-made 
her  machine,  and  she  remembered  her  soul, 
which  was  the  soul  of  St.  George  who  fought 
the  dragon,  and  she  cried,  "  I  will  rebuild 
Jerusalem  in  this  green  and  pleasant  land  or 
die  in  the  attempt." 

Don't  think  that  this  was  due  to  this  or  that 
man,  to  Kitchener,  or  to  another,  or  to  another. 
It  was  due  to  something  kindling  and  alive  in 
the  nation's  soul. 

When  I  first  went  to  the  Somme,  it  was  on 
the  day  we  took  Martinpuich  and  Flers.  And 
on  my  way  up,  I  passed  a  battalion  going  in. 
They  were  being  played  up  by  the  band,  to  the 
tune  of  "  It's  a  long,  long  trail  awinding  to  the 


The  War  and  the  Future  41 

land  of  my  dreams."  It  wasn't  a  long  trail, 
nor  a  winding  trail  to  most  of  those  men,  but 
only  a  few  miles  of  a  quite  straight  road  to 
le  Sars,  where  I  found  their  graves  afterwards. 

That  tune  is  perhaps  the  favourite  tune  of  the 
army  today.  The  army  knows  that  it  is  a  long, 
long  trail,  and  a  winding  one,  to  the  land  of 
our  dreams. 

And  if  in  this  war  it  has  seemed,  that  we 
have  done  little,  if  it  has  seemed,  that  we  re- 
treated at  Mons,  and  only  just  held  at  Ypres, 
and  withdrew  from  Gallipoli,  and  stood  still  at 
Salonika,  and  were  driven  back  at  St.  Quentin 
and  are  hard  pressed  on  the  Ridge,  I  think 
you  somehow  feel,  that  with  it  all,  no  matter 
how  long  the  trail  is,  nor  how  winding,  nor 
how  bitter  nor  how  bloody,  we'll  stick  it,  as 
long  as  we've  a  light  to  go  by,  even  if  we're  not 
so  clever  as  some,  nor  so  attractive. 

And  what  is  the  land  of  our  dreams?  We 
must  think  of  that. 

In  the  Bible  there  is  the  story  of  King  David, 
who  was  a  very  generous  and  very  bloody  yet 
very  noble  man.  And  David,  besieging  a  city 
in  the  summer,  was  faint  from  thirst,  and  he 
said,  "  I  wish  I  had  some  of  the  water  from 
that  pool  by  the  city  gate."  And  three  men 


42  The  War  and  the  Future 

heard  him  and  they  took  bottles  and  broke 
through  the  enemy  pickets  and  filled  their 
bottles  and  brought  the  water  to  David.  But 
David  would  not  drink  water  brought  to  him 
at  such  risk.  He  said,  it  would  be  like  drink- 
ing blood;  so  he  poured  it  out  to  his  God. 

The  men  of  those  armies  in  the  mud  are 
bringing  us  water  at  the  risk  of  their  lives,  the 
living  water  of  peace,  that  peace  which  I  think 
will  be  the  peace  that  passes  all  understanding, 
peace  to  have  our  lives  again  and  do  our  work 
again  and  be  with  our  loves  again.  But  if  we 
go  back  to  the  world  of  before  the  war,  that 
peace  won't  serve  us,  it  will  be  a  drinking  of  the 
blood  of  all  those  millions  of  young  men. 

I  said  some  time  ago,  that  the  only  things 
which  matter  in  war  are  courage  and  the  love 
of  your  comrades.  When  this  war  ends,  we 
shall  need  all  our  courage  and  all  our  com- 
rades, in  that  re-making  of  the  world,  which 
will  follow  this  destruction.  And  I  hope  that 
when  that  time  comes,  you  will  not  think  of  us 
again,  as  cold,  or  contemptuous,  or  oppressive, 
but  as  a  race  of  men  who  went  down  to  the 
death  for  a  friend  in  trouble,  as  St.  George  did, 
on  this  day,  so  many  centuries  ago. 

And  in  the  light  of  that  adventure  I  hope 


The  War  and  the  Future  43 

that  we  may  stand  together  to  remake  this 
broken  world,  a  little  nearer  to  the  heart's  de- 
sire. 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  FUTURE 

A  Lecture  Given  in  America 
January— May,  igi8 

I  HAVE  been  sent  to  you,  to  speak  about  the  war, 
and  about  the  future,  after  the  war. 

You  know  more  than  I  do  about  the  future. 
No  one  can  doubt  that  this  country  holds  the  fu- 
ture. I  will  try  to  tell  you  about  the  war.  I've 
seen  it  close  to,  and  I've  seen  its  results. 

English  people  who  know  America,  and  who 
have  a  pride  in  the  fair  fame  of  England,  know, 
that  in  the  old  days,  we  did  this  country  a  great 
wrong.  I,  here,  am  very  conscious  of  that. 
The  best  thing  I  can  say  of  that  past  is  that  it 
is  the  past.  We  are  now  associates  in  a  great 
work  which  is  a  forgetting  and  a  putting  by  of 
the  past,  in  an  effort  to  make  the  future. 

Whatever  this  war  is,  it  is  a  getting  rid  of 
the  past.  The  past  has  gone  into  the  bonfire. 
We  are  all  in  the  war  now,  realizing  with  more 
or  less  surprise  and  shock  and  bitterness,  that 
the  old  delights,  the  old  ideals,  the  old  way  of 

44 


The  War  and  the  Future  45 

life,  with  its  comfortable  loves  and  hatreds,  are 
gone.  We  have  to  remake  our  lives,  forget 
our  old  hatreds  and  learn  new  ones,  and  ask 
ourselves  the  question :  "  What  kind  of  a  new 
world  am  I  going  to  help  make?  " 

This  war  came  gradually  to  you.  You  were, 
as  we  were,  not  expecting  war,  seeing  the  threat 
and  the  preparation  of  war,  but  believing,  just 
as  we  believed,  that  commonsense,  or  ordinary 
human  sense,  and  one-thousandth  part  of  good- 
will in  human  intercourse  would  make  war  im- 
possible. War  to  you,  as  to  us,  seemed  to  be 
out  of  date  in  a  century  which  cut  the  Panama 
Canal  and  discovered  Radium  and  the  wireless 
telegraph.  But  it  came  none  the  less,  and  all 
our  ten  millions  of  adults  had  suddenly  to  put 
by  their  old  lives  and  take  on  new  and  dan- 
gerous and  terrible  lives.  Now  the  same  thing 
has  happened  to  you. 

When  the  threat  of  this  war  came  suddenly 
to  Europe  we  had  nothing  to  gain  by  war,  ex- 
cept our  own  soul.  That  is  a  big  exception. 
Short  of  that,  we  risked  everything  to  keep 
the  peace,  as  our  friends  complained,  and  our  en- 
emies agreed. 

When  the  war  came  to  us,  and  the  enemy 
Ambassador  was  leaving  England,  a  friend  of 


46  The  War  and  the  Future 

mine  went  to  say  good-bye  to  him.  My  friend 
said  to  him :  "  I  hope  you  think  that  we  did 
our  best  to  prevent  this  war?  "  The  Ambassa- 
dor said :  *  You  have  done  everything  that 
mortals  could  to  prevent  the  war." 

Now  the  years  before  the  war  were  very 
anxious  years  to  every  one.  The  threat  of 
war  hung  over  every  nation  in  Europe,  and 
every  nation  in  Europe  felt  and  said  and  wrote 
that  the  threat  of  war  was  a  German  threat. 
The  Germans  themselves  were  frank  about  it. 
I  often  used  to  see  German  students  and  Ger- 
man professors  in  England.  They  used  to  say, 
quite  openly,  "  Our  next  war  will  be  with  Eng- 
land." After  the  Hague  Conference  nine 
years  ago,  the  English  delegate  said  to  me  that 
the  attitude  of  Germany  could  only  be  ex- 
plained on  the  supposition  that  she  meant  to 
have  a  war.  Germany  was  like  an  athlete 
trained  to  the  minute;  she  was  spoiling  for  a 
scrap.  When  boxers  are  trained  to  the  minute, 
it  is  said  that  their  friends  always  prefer  to 
walk  behind  them,  for  when  a  boxer  who  is 
very  fit  and  spoiling  for  a  scrap  sees  a  nice  chin 
the  temptation  to  hit  that  chin  is  sometimes 
more  than  he  can  bear. 

In  the  summer  of  1914,  the  European  chins 


The  War  and  the  Future  47 

looked  too  tempting  to  Germany,  and  she  hit 
out  at  them.  The  results  are  before  us. 

This  war  employs  all  the  strength  and  all  the 
talent  of  the  nations  waging  it.  One  of  the 
weapons  used  by  our  enemies  has  been  that  of 
lying.  They  have  spread  abroad  lies  about  us, 
which  many  repeat  and  some  few,  perhaps,  be- 
lieve. I  wish  here  to  state  and  answer  some 
of  those  lies. 

•Firstly:  that  we  are  a  decadent  people,  in- 
tent on  sports  and  money-making,  and  without 
ideals  or  any  sense  of  serving  the  state. 

The  answer  to  that  is  that  in  England  and 
Scotland  alone  five  million  four  hundred  thou- 
sand of  our  men  enlisted  as  volunteers  to  fight 
for  our  ideals,  without  compulsion  of  any  kind, 
while  three  million  more  who  tried  to  enlist 
were  rejected  as  too  old,  or  physically  unfit,  or 
needed  in  other  work.  That  was  before  we 
had  conscription. 

Secondly:  that  we  are  a  cowardly  people,  who 
let  other  people  fight  for  us. 

The  answer  to  that  is  that  had  we  been  a 
cowardly  people  we  should  not  have  gone  to 
war;  but  we  did;  we  came  into  this  war  and 
have  lost  in  this  war  something  like  two  and 
one-half  millions  of  our  best  men  killed, 


48  The  War  and  the  Future 

wounded  and  missing,  and  this  without  count- 
ing the  losses  of  the  men  of  our  Colonies. 

Thirdly:  That  we  are  a  mean  people,  who 
do  not  take  our  fair  share  in  the  war. 

The  answer  to  that  is,  that  we  hold  one-third 
of  the  line  in  France,  much  of  the  line  in  Italy, 
nearly  all  the  line  in  Serbia,  all  the  line  in  Pal- 
estine and  Mesopotamia,  and  all  the  line  on 
the  vast  colonial  fronts  in  Africa.  We  supply 
or  have  supplied  France,  Italy,  Serbia,  Belgium, 
Roumania  and  Russia  with  millions  of  tons  of 
equipment  of  all  sorts,  guns,  shells,  uniforms, 
boots  and  machines,  in  all  amounting  to  3,000 
million  dollars  worth.  We  feed  and  clothe 
and  always  have  fed  and  clothed  since  the  war 
began  the  greater  part  of  the  population  of  Bel- 
gium and  practically  the  whole  of  the  popula- 
tion of  Serbia.  Besides  our  contributions  of 
men  and  guns,  we  have  immense  hospital  or- 
ganizations working  in  Russia,  in  Italy,  in  Rou- 
mania, and  with  the  French.  We  have  had  the 
greater  part  of  the  policing  of  the  seas  to  do, 
and  practically  all  the  submarine  hunting.  The 
sea  is  not  an  easy  place  to  patrol,  and  the  sub- 
marine is  not  an  easy  thing  to  catch,  but  not 
much  German  trade  has  been  done  by  sea  since 
the  war,  and  not  many  raiders  have  got  through 


The  War  and  the  Future  49 

our  guards  and  we  have  sunk  (I  believe)  not 
less  than  ten  times  as  many  submarines  as  the 
enemy  had  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  We 
have  built  ships  to  make  our  navy  at  least  half 
as  strong  again  as  it  was  before  the  war.  We 
have  caused  to  be  made  and  transported  25,- 
000,000  tons  of  shells,  and  we  have  conveyed  to 
and  from  different  parts  of  the  globe,  as  soldiers 
going  and  coming,  well,  sick  or  wounded, 
some  13,000,000  men.  Our  policing  of  the 
sea  has  been  so  done  that  we  have  lost  by  en- 
emy action  2,700  of  these  13,000,000  travelling 
soldiers. 

Then  in  money,  we  have  spent  on  this  war 
five  billion  five  hundred  million  dollars,  of  which 
rather  more  than  one-fifth  has  been  loaned  or 
given  to  our  Allies. 

People  sometimes  say  a  fourth  lie  about  us: 
—  that  we  are  a  grasping  people  who  will  profit 
by  this  war. 

Let  me  say  this,  that  no  one  will  profit  from 
this  war.  We  in  Europe  will  be  beggared  by 
it  for  years  to  come;  only  we  want  the  world 
to  profit  by  it,  by  a  change  of  heart,  by  an  un- 
derstanding among  the  nations,  and  by  the 
knowledge  which  we  in  Europe  needed  this  war 
to  teach  us,  that  human  life  is  the  precious  thing 


50  The  War  and  the  Future 

on  this  earth,  and  that  we  are  here  truly  linked 
man  to  man,  and  not  divided  up  nation  by  na- 
tion. We  are  one  body  of  humanity. 

There  is  a  fifth  lie,  that  we  are  a  greedy 
people,  who  ask  you  Americans  to  starve,  while 
we  feast  on  white  bread  and  other  delicacies. 
The  answer  to  that  is,  that  no  white  bread  has 
been  made  in  England  for  at  least  eighteen 
months,  and  that  there  is  no  feasting  there. 
There  is  no  home  in  all  that  land  that  is  not  the 
sadder  for  this  war. 

There  is  no  need  to  lie  about  a  nation  any 
more  than  there  is  any  need  to  lie  about  a  man. 
The  truth  emerges  above  any  lie. 

I  know  my  nation's  faults  as  well  as  I  know 
my  own.  They  are  the  faults  of  a  set  and  of 
a  system.  They  are  faults  of  head,  they  are 
not  faults  of  heart.  When  I  think  of  those 
faults  I  think  of  a  long  graveyard  in  France, 
a  hundred  miles  long,  where  simple,  good,  kind, 
ignorant  Englishmen  by  the  thousand  and  the 
hundred  thousand  lie  in  every  attitude  of  rest 
and  agony,  for  ever  and  for  ever  and  for  ever. 
They  did  not  know  where  Belgium  is,  nor  what 
Germany  is,  nor  even  what  England  is.  They 
were  told  that  a  great  country  had  taken  a  little 
country  by  the  throat,  and  that  it  was  up  to 


The  War  and  the  Future  51 

them  to  help,  and  they  went  out  by  the  hundred 
and  the  hundred  thousand,  and  by  the  million, 
on  that  word  alone,  and  they  stayed  there,  in 
the  mud,  to  help  that  little  country,  till  they 
were  killed. 

I've  been  along  many  miles  of  that  old  line, 
and  seen  those  graves,  many  of  them  not  even 
marked,  except  by  a  bayonet,  or  a  bit  of  pack- 
ing case,  and  I've  thought,  as  I  went  along, 
what  epitaph  could  be  put  above  that  unend- 
ing graveyard,  and  I  could  only  think  of  one 
epitaph,  "  These  men  came  here  of  their  own 
free  will  to  help  their  fellow  men  in  trouble.'' 

There  comes  the  question,  what  is  the  war 
about?  Each  nation  has  its  answer  to  that 
question,  an  answer  that  could  be  put  into 
twenty  words.  But  in  each  country,  for  many 
years  before  the  war,  millions  of  prejudices, 
and  beliefs,  and  customs,  and  ignorances,  and 
blindnesses,  and  memories,  went  to  make  the 
war.  The  question,  what  it  is  about,  does  not 
now  so  deeply  matter,  as  the  question,  what  the 
struggle  is,  now  that  it  is  in  full  swing. 

It  is  a  struggle  between  two  conceptions  of 
life,  the  soldier's  and  the  civilian's.  Both  con- 
ceptions have  existed  ever  since  the  world  began. 
Much  may  be  said  for  both. 


52  The  War  and  the  Future 

The  soldier  says,  in  theory,  "  Men  are  not 
of  much  account;  it  is  the  man  who  matters. 
The  man  must  have  power  over  other  men 
and  be  able  to  direct  them  as  he  chooses  and 
punish  them  if  they  disobey;  since  men  need  a 
strong  hand.  A  State  can  only  be  strong  if  it 
is  so  organized  as  to  be  obedient  within  and 
feared  without.  Every  man  within  the  State 
owes  service  to  the  State,  he  must  be  trained 
to  defend  it  and  fight  for  it.  All  men  of  a  cer- 
tain wealth  and  standing  must  be  officers;  the 
rest  are  and  must  be  cannon  fodder.  The  citi- 
zens must  have  good  roads  fit  for  the  move- 
ment of  troops,  adequate  food  and  housing,  a 
thorough  military  training  and  as  much  school- 
ing as  may  be  good  for  soldiers."  Punctuality, 
hard  work,  and  cleanliness  are  made  much  of; 
merit  of  certain  kinds  is  certain  of  its  reward, 
the  citizens  are  ticketed,  looked  after,  used  and 
pensioned.  They  are  not  encouraged  to  think 
for  themselves  nor  permitted  to  break  the  regu- 
lations. Napoleon  in  France  and  T'chaka  in 
Zululand  both  created  soldier  states  in  the  last 
century. 

The  civilian  says,  in  effect,  "  It  is  true,  that 
in  case  of  need  every  man  must  be  ready  to 
fight  for  his  State,  and  should  be  trained  so  that 


The  War  and  the  Future  53 

he  may  do  so,  but  war  is  not  a  normal  condi- 
tion, it  is  an  accident  which  may  not  occur,  and 
the  direction  of  the  State  by  soldiers  is  apt  to 
create  a  privileged  class,  who  will  enslave  the 
remainder  of  the  citizens  for  their  own  ends, 
which  may  be  base  and  probably  will  be  cruel, 
and  which  may  and  very  likely  will  bring  about 
that  state  of  war  which  they  are  created  to 
prevent."  So  that,  in  the  civilian  state,  the 
army  is  made  small,  and  interferences  with  per- 
sonal liberty  are  bitterly  resented  and  swiftly 
opposed.  The  occupation  of  the  civilian  state 
is  generally  commerce.  Its  relaxation  or 
amusement  is  generally  the  adornment  of  the 
individual  life,  with  the  arts  and  sciences  which 
enrich  life  and  make  it  pleasant.  The  general 
feeling  is,  that  men  were  not  meant  to  be  the 
slaves  of  other  men  nor  of  human  systems;  but 
to  develop  themselves  in  as  loose,  easy  and 
pleasant  an  organization  as  a  nation  can  be 
without  collapsing. 

Those  are  the  two  theories  and  ways  of  life, 
both  have  been  tried  and  both  will  work,  and 
both  have  left  great  marks  in  history. 

But  in  working,  both  are  open  to  grave  de- 
fects. No  nation  is  perfect,  and  no  system  of 
living  will  suit  all  the  people  all  the  time;  and 


54  The  War  and  the  Future 

these  ways  of  life,  if  persisted  in  by  any  nation 
for  three  or  four  generations,  intensify  them- 
selves, till,  in  the  military  state  there  is  too 
much  control  and  in  the  civilian  state  too  little. 
In  the  civilian  state,  where  much  is  left  to  the 
individual,  much  is  left  undone.  Many  indi- 
viduals grow  up  to  be  highly  educated,  pleas- 
ant and  agreeable  men,  but  more  grow  up  with 
the  feeling  that  there  is  nothing  to  stop  them 
from  exploiting  their  fellow  citizens,  and  this 
they  do  quite  as  ruthlessly  as  any  soldier,  and 
with  far  less  recompense.  The  soldier  may 
drive  his  men,  but  he  feeds,  clothes  and  pen- 
sions them.  The  civilian  may  drive  his  men 
and  scrap  them  as  old  tools  when  he  has  broken 
them.  Very  soon,  in  the  civilian  state,  indi- 
vidualism comes  to  a  point  in  which  the  service 
of  the  State  is  left  to  those  who  care  for  that 
kind  of  thing.  Those  who  do  care  for  that 
kind  of  thing  find  that  the  fear  of  interference 
with  liberty,  which  is  the  main  passion  in  a 
civilian  state,  has  prevented  them  from  having 
any  power.  They  can  do  neither  good  nor  evil, 
and  so  they  stagnate.  They  cease  to  attract 
the  finer  and  more  active  kinds  of  mind.  So 
that  in  a  civilian  state  though  you  may  find  cul- 
ture, politeness,  niceness  of  feeling,  enlighten- 


The  War  and  the  Future  55 

ment,  and  a  wise  protection  of  the  individual 
against  certain  aggressions  by  King  and  State, 
and  a  great  commerce,  strongly  protected,  you 
may  also  find  the  man  of  action  discounte- 
nanced, and  the  talker  in  power  in  his  stead. 

In  the  military  state,  the  soldier  justifies  him- 
self to  his  subjects  by  some  act  which  rids  the 
State  of  a  danger  or  enriches  it  with  a  piece  of 
plunder,  so  that  he  is  able  to  say,  "  You  see,  the 
Army  saved  you  or  enriched  you.  You  see 
that  you  must  have  an  Army."  When  the 
army  is  enlarged,  he  attacks  another  State  and 
enriches  his  own  State  still  further;  definitely 
enriches  his  officers  with  gifts  of  other  people's 
property  and  his  surviving  men  with  bits  of 
other  people's  lands,  and  at  the  same  time  in- 
creases his  army  by  conscripting  the  conquered 
peoples. 

Presently  he  forgets  that  the  State  is  any- 
thing except  himself.  He  cries  out  that  the 
State  is  himself,  since  he  is  the  head  of  the 
Army  and  the  Army  is  the  State.  He  subordi- 
nates everything  to  the  army.  He  tolerates 
schools  only  in  so  far  as  they  teach  military 
maxims,  and  women  only  because  they  produce 
cannon  fodder.  He  encourages  bad  manners 
in  his  officers,  because  he  thinks  that  it  teaches 


56  The  War  and  the  Future 

them  to  dominate;  he  preaches  about  duty  and 
his  own  magnificence  in  his  churches  and 
schools,  because  he  thinks  that  it  teaches  people 
to  obey.  And  at  last,  when  his  entire  State 
does  obey,  and  all  his  officers  have  bad  manners, 
and  a  desire  to  dominate  everybody,  he  has  in 
his  hands  a  terrible  instrument  of  destruction 
which  may  be  launched  anywhere  at  his  ca- 
price. He  is  that  irresponsible  autocratic 
power  who  has  been  the  main  cause  of  war  for 
twenty  centuries. 

But  for  the  fact  that  all  the  power  and  blind 
obedience  of  a  nation  may  be  flung  anywhere 
at  the  caprice  of  one  man,  there  is  much  to  be 
said  for  the  military  state.  But  that  fact  damns 
it,  and  the  world  has  never  allowed  it  to  con- 
tinue. The  gunman  who  may  be  drunk  or  mad 
or  savage  at  any  minute  is  too  dangerous  to  be 
allowed  in  the  house.  Rome,  who  had  nobly 
held  the  idea  of  law,  became  that  kind  of  State 
and  fell.  France,  who  had  nobly  held  the  idea 
of  liberty,  became  that  kind  of  State,  and  fell; 
and  the  savage  Zulus,  who  made  themselves  a 
people  and  then  an  exterminating  scourge  also 
fell;  and  I  feel  that  a  grosser  people,  who  have 
upheld  neither  law  nor  liberty,  but  have  become 
exterminating  scourges,  will  also  fall.  We 


The  War  and  the  Future  57 

civilian  peoples,  flouted,  insulted,  and  taken  un- 
awares, are  banded  together  to  make  that  con- 
ception of  life  to  fall. 

Last  April  I  was  in  a  dirty  little  town  in 
France.  On  my  right  there  was  a  ruined  fac- 
tory containing  a  pile  of  smashed  sewing  ma- 
chines, on  my  left  there  was  a  casualty  clearing 
station,  in  what  had  once  been  a  rather  nice 
house.  Just  outside  the  hospital  there  was  a 
little  old  French  woman  selling  newspapers; 
and  dozens  of  soldiers  were  buying  news- 
papers and  talking  about  the  news.  One  of 
the  soldiers  shouted  out,  "  Hooray,  America 
has  declared  war,"  and  another,  who  was  older 
and  more  thoughtful,  said,  "  Thank  God,  now 
we  may  have  a  decent  world  again." 

War  in  one  way  is  very  like  Mrs.  Mac- 
Gregor. 

The  poet  Swinburne,  when  he  was  a  young 
man,  was  very  fond  of  impassioned  conversa- 
tion and  of  whisky.  One  night  he  met  a  friend, 
and  suggested  that  the  friend  should  come  to 
his  lodgings  for  a  talk.  On  their  way  Swin- 
burne bought  a  bottle  of  whisky  and  with  an  air 
of  satanic  cunning  hid  it  in  his  tail  pocket,  and 
said,  "  I  must  be  very  careful;  my  landlady  is 
a  very  troublesome  woman."  When  they 


58  The  War  and  the  Future 

reached  the  door  Swinburne  said,  "  We  must 
go  in  very  quietly;  my  landlady  is  a  very  trouble- 
some woman."  They  opened  the  door  and 
crept  in  on  tiptoe,  and  were  just  creeping  up- 
stairs, when  a  door  opened  and  a  stern  voice 
said,  "Is  that  you,  Mr.  Swinburrrrrne? " 
"  Yes,  Mrs.  MacGregor,"  said  Swinburne. 
Then  the  voice  said,  "  Whattan  is  yon  wee 
bottle  in  yeir  bit  pocket,  Mr.  Swinburrrne?  " 
44  O,"  said  Swinburne,  "  it's  my  cough-mixture, 
Mrs.  MacGregor;  I'm  afraid  I've  caught  cold." 
44  Cough-mixture  me  nae  cough-mixture,"  said 
Mrs.  MacGregor;  44  yon  is  a  bottle  of  whuskey. 
And  ye'll  give  it  heer,  Mr.  Swinburrrne. 
Didn't  I  promise  yeir  father  ye  shuld  na  touch 
the  whuskey?  "  And  she  grabbed  the  bottle 
and  disappeared,  and  Swinburne  was  left  wring- 
ing his  hands  and  saying,  <4  She's  a  very  trouble- 
some woman." 

That  is  a  light  story,  but  it  reminds  me  of  the 
war.  Many  and  many  a  gathering  of  friends 
has  been  interrupted  by  that  savage  goddess. 
All  over  Europe,  quiet,  gentle,  ordinary  men, 
who  were  going,  as  they  thought,  to  the  enjoy- 
ment of  delight,  have  been  seized  upon  and 
robbed  by  her,  not  only  of  material  things,  but 
of  love  and  leisure  and  of  life  itself. 


The  War  and  the  Future  59 

There  is  a  story  of  a  young  king  of  India, 
who  became  a  leper  whom  no  one  could  cure. 
An  old  man  told  him  that  if  he  went  to  a  cer- 
tain city  and  ate  bread  in  a  house  where  there 
was  no  sorrow,  he  would  be  cured.  So  he  went 
to  the  city,  and  went  into  every  house,  but  there 
was  no  house  that  had  no  sorrow,  so  he  was 
not  cured.  "  There  was  no  house  that  had 
not  one  dead." 

There  is  no  house,  poor  or  rich,  in  any  of 
the  countries  now  fighting  in  Europe  that  has 
not  one  dead,  generally  some  quite  young  man. 


Many  great  minds  have  brooded  over  war; 
most  of  the  great  minds  of  the  world  have 
taken  part  in  war,  and  some  have  tried  to  un- 
derstand it.  No  great  mind  has  ever  looked 
upon  it  as  a  good  thing,  though  they  see  that 
sometimes  in  life  outrageous,  devilish  evil  can 
be  checked  in  no  other  way.  To  most  of  them, 
Homer,  Euripides,  Shakespeare,  Tolstoi,  it  is 
nearly  the  last,  greatest  and  completest  evil  that 
can  come  into  human  life. 

You  all  know  how  a  fever  comes  upon  the 
body.  Poison  must  be  introduced  into  it  from 
outside,  some  living  poison  of  germs;  the  body 


60  The  War  and  the  Future 

must  be  predisposed  to  nurture  the  poison;  it 
must  be  a  little  overstrained,  restless,  tired, 
bored,  cross,  or  out  of  sorts.  The  natural 
guards  of  the  body  must  be  unable  to  help. 
Then  the  poison  germs  take  hold  and  the  nor- 
mal life  of  the  man  ceases.  He  becomes  a  rag- 
ing incoherent  maniac  terrible  to  himself  and  a 
danger  to  all  about  him,  till  the  poison  is  at  its 
height  and  has  worked  itself  out  in  death  or 
recovery. 

Well,  you  will  agree  with  me  perhaps  that 
war  comes  into  the  world,  in  much  such  a  way. 
The  body  of  a  nation  does  not  want  it,  though 
it  may  think  about  it  often  and  much,  the  body 
of  a  nation  is  normally  busy  with  its  own  life. 
Then,  in  times  of  overstrain,  of  restlessness,  or 
of  excitement,  or  even  of  busy  and  pleasant 
well-being,  the  poison  is  introduced,  wilfully, 
by  kings  and  their  ministers,  and  the  nation 
sickens. 

The  symptoms  are  always  the  same.  The  in- 
fected nation  becomes,  first  of  all,  arrogant. 
It  gets  what  we  call  swelled-head.  It  thinks 
itself,  possibly  with  reason,  the  finest  nation  in 
the  world.  As  the  poison  takes  hold  and  the 
germs  multiply,  this  arrogance  leads  to  a 
spiritual  blindness  to  whatever  may  be  good  or 


The  War  and  tine  Future  61 

right  in  any  other  nation  in  the  world.  This 
blindness  leads  to  an  indifference  to  whatever 
any  other  nation  may  do  or  care.  This  indif- 
ference leads  to  the  bloody  theory,  that  it  is  a 
duty  to  subjugate  any  other  nation.  And  at 
this  point,  the  poison  boils  over  in  the  system, 
the  nation  involved  runs  up  a  temperature,  and 
it  passes  rapidly  from  acts  of  injustice  to  some 
culminating  act  of  impiety,  such  as  cannot  be 
permitted,  and  against  which  a  protest  has  to 
be  made  by  the  outraged  world. 

Then  comes  war,  which  goes  on,  like  a  fever, 
till  the  nation  is  dead  or  cured. 

That  may  not  be  how  all  wars  begin,  but 
that  is  how  the  greatest  and  longest  and  most 
evil  wars  have  begun,  in  modern  times.  A  na- 
tion has  caught  a  fever,  run  up  a  temperature, 
gone  mad  and  bitten,  been  a  danger  and  a 
scourge  to  the  world,  and  has  gradually  sick- 
ened itself  out  into  exhaustion,  peace  and  wis- 
dom. Spain  had  such  a  fever  three  hundred 
years  ago,  when  her  motto  was  the  proud 
boast,  "  The  world  does  not  suffice  for  us." 
France  had  such  a  fever  a  century  later.  Eng- 
land had  such  a  fever  when  she  forced  this 
country  into  the  Rebellion. 

In  all  three  countries,  there  was  just  that 


62  The  War  and  the  Future 

same  irresponsible  autocratic  power  to  cultivate 
the  fever  for  his  own  ends.  And  who  held  that 
power?  The  immense  power  and  wealth  of 
Spain  were  controlled  by  Phillip  the  Second,  one 
old,  miserly,  stubborn  dotard,  a  sort  of  a  re- 
ligious mule.  The  immense  and  ordered  power 
of  France  was  controlled  by  Louis  Quatorze, 
one  little  man  who  wore  high-heeled  shoes  and 
an  immense  wig  to  give  himself  some  air  of 
greatness.  Afterwards  it  was  held  by  Napo- 
leon, of  whom  the  French  now  say  that  he  was 
as  great  as  any  man  can  be  without  principles. 
And  who  held  the  power  of  England?  The 
elderly,  pear-headed,  self-willed  German,  often 
mad  and  always  stupid,  who  wondered  how  the 
apple  got  inside  the  dumpling.  And  working 
with  him  were  the  few,  corrupt  and  evil  fami- 
lies engaged  in  the  enslavement  of  the  English 
poor. 

Such  were  the  four  irresponsible  autocrats 
who  caused  the  greatest,  longest  and  most  evil 
wars  of  the  past  But  all  the  fever  of  their 
wars,  multiplied  ten-fold,  would  be  as  nothing 
to  the  fever  of  arrogance,  blindness,  wild  and 
bloody  thinking,  and  impious  dealing,  with 
which  another  irresponsible  autocrat  prepared 
the  present  war.  No  former  autocrat  took 


The  War  and  the  Future  63 

such  pains  to  organize  armed  force,  and  to 
make  the  evil  blood  in  his  nation  to  run  so 
hotly.  No  former  autocrat  had  such  skill  or 
such  clever  servants  to  prepare  and  direct  the 
outburst.  And  no  former  autocrat  has  reaped 
such  a  crop  of  bloodshed,  massacre  and  de- 
struction. 

I'm  not  here  to  abuse  our  present  enemies. 
We  are  against  them  today,  but  we  have  been 
with  them  in  the  past  and  we  shall  have  to  be 
with  them  in  the  future,  if  there  is  to  be  any 
future.  In  this  life,  collections  of  men  behave 
worse  than  individuals,  and  it  is  the  thought, 
and  the  way  of  life  and  the  irresponsible  auto- 
crat that  make  them  behave  worse,  that  are  the 
evil  things.  This  war  might  have  been  averted, 
but  that  that  one  irresponsible  autocrat  was 
afraid  of  democracy.  Consider  what  he  has 
let  loose  upon  the  world.  Consider,  too,  what 
he  has  raised  against  him. 

A  few  minutes  ago,  I  said  that  the  greatest 
minds  among  men  looked  upon  war  as  nearly 
(but  not  quite)  the  last,  greatest  and  completest 
evil  that  can  come  into  human  life.  Nearly, 
but  not  quite.  There  is  one  completer  evil, 
that  of  letting  proud,  bloody  and  devilish  men 
to  rule  this  world.  While  proud,  bloody  and 


64  The  War  and  the  Future 

devilish  men  strike  for  power  here,  free  men, 
who  had  rather  die  than  serve  them,  will  strike 
against  them.  And  evil  as  war  is,  that  resolve 
of  the  free  soul  is  beautiful.  It  is  in  that  re- 
solve that  we  free  peoples  are  banded,  and  it  is 
in  that  resolve  that  we  shall  fight,  till  the  proud, 
bloody  and  devilish  idea  is  gone. 

All  of  you  here  have  read  about  this  war 
daily  for  more  than  three  years.  All  of  you 
know  some  one  who  is  taking  part  in  it,  and  all 
of  you  have  in  your  minds  some  picture  of  what 
it  is  like.  The  population  of  these  States  is 
said  to  be  nearly  a  hundred  millions.  Not  less 
than  twenty-five  millions  of  men,  or  the  equiva- 
lent of  the  entire  adult  male  population  of  these 
States  are  or  have  been  engaged  in  the  fighting 
of  this  war,  and  not  less  than  another  forty 
millions  are  engaged  in  the  making  the  fighting 
possible,  by  the  making  of  arms,  equipment  and 
munitions.  Then  besides  those  millions  there 
are  ten  million  dead,  and  twenty  million 
maimed,  disabled,  blinded  or  lunatic  soldiers 
who  will  never  fight  again. 

You  begin  to  meet  the  war  many  miles  from 
any  part  of  the  fighting.  You  come  upon  a  vil- 
lage of  little  huts  near  a  railway  siding.  A 
month  later  you  find  that  the  village  has  become 


The  War  and  the  Future  65 

a  town.  A  month  later  you  find  that  the  town 
has  become  a  city.  In  that  city  the  picked  in- 
tellect of  your  country  uses  the  picked  knowl- 
edge of  the  universe  to  make  the  picked  devilry 
of  this  war,  some  gas  that  will  be  deadlier  than 
the  other  man's,  some  shell  that  will  kill  over  a 
bigger  area,  some  bomb  that  will  go  off  with  a 
louder  bang  and  blast  a  bigger  hole  in  a  town. 

You  go  elsewhere,  and  you  see  miles  of  chim- 
neys spouting  fire,  where  every  known  force  is 
pressing  every  known  metal  into  every  known 
kind  of  engine  of  death. 

You  see  the  nimblest  brains  and  hands  and 
all  the  finest  courage  perfecting  our  control  of 
the  air.  You  see  men  gathering  and  packing 
food,  breaking  stones  for  roads  and  shaping 
sleepers  for  railways.  You  see  men  by  the 
million  about  whom  nobody  cared,  in  the  old 
days,  in  peace,  suddenly  taken  up,  and  fed  and 
clad  and  taught,  and  made  much  of.  You  see 
horses  and  cars  by  the  hundred  thousand,  and 
everything  that  is  swift  and  strong  and  clever 
and  destructive,  suddenly  important  and  de- 
sired and  of  great  account.  You  see  the  toil 
of  a  nation  suddenly  intensified  sevenfold,  and 
made  acute,  and  better  paid  than  it  ever  was, 
and  intellect,  the  searching  intellect,  that  light 


66  The  War  and  the  Future 

of  the  mind  which  brings  us  out  of  the  mud, 
suddenly  sought  for  in  the  street.  And  you 
think,  "  Is  man  awaking  suddenly  to  his  heri- 
tage, and  to  the  knowledge  of  what  life  may  be 
here?  "  Then  you  say  to  yourself,  "  No,  this 
is  all  due  to  the  war." 

You  see  young  men  giving  up  their  hopes, 
and  mature  men  their  attainments,  and  women 
losing  their  sons,  their  husbands  and  their 
chance  of  husbands,  and  children  losing  their 
fathers  and  their  chances  of  life,  and  you  ask, 
what  earthly  endeavour  can  cause  all  this  sac- 
rifice, into  what  kind  of  a  hopper  is  it  all  being 
fed?  It  is  being  fed  into  the  war. 

The  war  is  spread  over  a  tract  as  big  as  these 
States.  In  many  places  the  tide  of  war  has 
passed  and  repassed  several  times,  till  the 
dwellers  in  those  places  have  died  of  starvation, 
or  been  carried  away  into  slavery.  In  the  East, 
you  can  walk  for  miles  along  roads  peopled  with 
mad,  starving  and  dying  men  and  women;  there 
are  heaps  of  little  bones  all  along  the  roads. 
They  are  all  little  bones.  They  are  the  little 
bones  of  little  children  who  have  died  of  starva- 
tion there.  All  the  bigger  bones  have  been 
taken  by  the  enemy  to  make  artificial  manure. 


The  War  and  the  Future  67 

In  the  West,  there  is  a  strip  of  land  about 
four  hundred  and  fifty  miles  long,  by  from  ten 
to  twenty  broad.  It  is  called  the  Army  Zone. 
With  the  exception  of  a  few  poor  people  who 
sell  little  things,  such  as  fruit  and  tobacco,  to 
the  soldiers,  all  the  inhabitants  of  that  zone  are 
gone.  The  place  is  inhabited  by  the  armies. 
The  business  there  is  destruction,  and  rest,  after 
destruction,  so  that  the  destroyers  may  destroy 
again. 

All  that  strip  of  France  and  Flanders  was 
once  happily  at  peace.  All  of  it  was  rich  and 
prosperous,  with  corn  and  wine  and  industry. 
Even  the  mountains  were  covered  with  timber. 
Today,  after  the  manhood  of  four  nations  has 
fought  over  it  for  three  and  a  half  years  it  is 
a  sight  which  no  man  can  describe. 

If  one  could  look  down  upon  that  strip  from 
above,  it  would  look  like  a  broad  ribbon  laid 
across  France.  The  normal  colour  of  a  coun- 
tryside is  green,  and  green  country  would  ap- 
pear on  both  sides  of  the  strip.  At  the  edges 
however  the  green  would  lose  its  brightness,  it 
would  look  dull  and  rather  mottled;  further 
from  the  edges  it  would  look  still  duller,  and  in 
the  centre  of  the  strip  no  trace  of  green  would 


68  The  War  and  the  Future 

show,  it  would  all  be  dark  except  that  the  dark- 
ness would  glitter  in  many  places  with  little 
flashes  of  fire. 

And  if  one  comes  to  that  strip  by  any  of  the 
roads  which  lead  to  it,  one  sees,  at  first,  simply 
the  normal  French  landscape,  which  is  tidy, 
well-cultivated  land,  on  a  big  scale,  with  little 
neat  woods  and  little,  compact  villages. 
One  notices  that  many  houses  are  closed,  and 
that  very  few  men  are  about.  Presently  one 
comes  to  a  village,  where  one  or  two  of  the 
houses  are  roofless,  and  perhaps  the  church 
tower  has  a  hole  in  it.  And  if  you  ask,  you 
hear,  "  No,  the  enemy  never  got  so  far  as  here, 
but  they  shelled  it."  A  little  further  on,  you 
come  to  a  village  where  every  other  house  is 
a  burnt-out  shell,  all  down  the  street.  And  if 
you  ask  how  this  came  about,  that  every  other 
house  should  be  destroyed,  you  hear,  "  O,  the 
enemy  occupied  this  place  and  burnt  every  other 
house  for  punishment."  And  if  you  ask,  pun- 
ishment for  what?  You  hear,  "  O,  some  of 
the  enemy  got  drunk  here  and  fired  at  each 
other,  and  they  said  we  did  it,  so  they  shot  the 
Maire  and  burnt  every  other  house." 

Then,  a  little  further  on,  you  come  to  a  vil- 
lage where  there  are  no  roofs  nor  any  big  part 


The  War  and  the  Future  69 

of  a  house,  but  heaps  of  brick  and  stone  much 
blackened  with  fire,  and  on  both  sides  of  the 
road  you  see  gashes  and  heapings  of  the  earth 
and  a  great  many  stakes  supporting  barbed 
wire,  and  a  general  mess  and  litter  as  though 
there  had  been  a  fair  there  in  rather  rainy 
weather.  And  if  you  ask  about  this,  they  say, 
"  Ah,  this  is  where  our  old  support  line  ran, 
just  along  here,  and  just  under  the  church  in 
what  used  to  be  the  charnel-house,  we  had  the 
snuggest  little  dug-out  that  ever  was." 

Then  if  you  go  on,  you  come  to  a  landscape 
where  there  is  no  visible  living  thing;  nothing 
but  a  blasted  bedevilled  sea  of  mud,  gouged 
into  great  holes  and  gashed  into  great  trenches, 
and  blown  into  immense  pits,  and  all  littered  and 
heaped  with  broken  iron,  and  broken  leather, 
and  rags  and  boots  and  jars  and  tins,  and  old 
barbed  wire  by  the  ton  and  unexploded  shells 
and  bombs  by  the  hundred  ton,  and  where  there 
is  no  building  and  no  road,  and  no  tree  and  no 
grass,  nothing  but  desolation  and  mud  and 
death. 

And  if  you  ask,  "  Is  this  Hell?  "  They  say, 
"  No,  this  is  the  market  place  where  we  are 
standing.  The  church  is  that  lump  to  the 
right."  Then  if  you  look  down  you  see  that 


70  The  War  and  the  Future 

the  ground,  though  full  of  holes,  is  littered 
with  little  bits  of  brick,  and  you  realize  that 
you  are  standing  in  a  town. 

If  you  go  on  a  little  further,  you  notice  that 
the  mud  is  a  little  fresher.  You  come  to  a 
deafening  noise,  which  bursts  in  a  succession  of 
shattering  crashes,  followed  by  long  wailing 
shrieks,  partly  like  gigantic  cats  making  love, 
and  partly  as  though  the  sky  were  linen  being 
ripped  across.  The  noise  makes  you  sick  and 
dizzy. 

If  you  go  on  a  little  further  you  come  to  a 
place  where  the  ground  is  being  whirled  aloft 
in  clods  and  shards,  amid  clouds  of  dust  and 
smoke  and  powdered  brick.  Screaming  shells 
pass  over  you  or  crash  beside  you,  and  you 
realize  then  that  you  are  at  the  front.  Like 
Voltaire,  you  say,  "  I  am  among  men,  because 
they  are  fighting.  I  am  among  civilized  men 
because  they  are  doing  it  so  savagely."  And 
when  the  smoke  and  dust  of  the  shells  clear 
away,  you  see  no  men,  civilized  or  savage,  noth- 
ing but  a  vast  expanse  of  mud,  with  a  dead 
mule  or  two,  and  great  black  and  white  devils 
of  smoke  where  shells  are  bursting. 

In  parts  of  that  strip  of  France,  especially 
in  the  broadest  part,  you  come  upon  places 


The  War  and  the  Future  71 

where  the  ground  is  almost  unmarked  with 
shell-fire.  There  are  no  traces  of  fighting,  no 
graves,  no  litter  of  broken  men  or  broken  equip- 
ment, the  fields  are  green  and  there  is  no  noise 
of  war.  Yet  all  the  houses  are  ruined;  they 
have  been  gutted,  their  roofs  have  been  blown 
off  or  their  fronts  pulled  out,  and  in  their 
streets  you  will  sometimes  see  vast  collections 
of  pots,  pans,  desks,  tables,  chairs,  pictures,  all 
smashed,  evidently  wantonly  smashed;  men 
have  evidently  defaced  them,  cut,  burnt,  and 
banged  them.  And  you  notice  that  for  miles 
of  that  country  all  the  best  of  the  trees,  espe- 
cially the  fruit  trees,  have  been  cut  down,  not 
for  firewood,  for  they  are  all  there,  with  their 
heads  in  the  mud,  but  for  wanton  devilry. 

And  if  you  ask  about  this,  you  will  hear  — 
"  O,  no;  there  was  no  fighting  here,  but  this  is 
the  ground  the  enemy  couldn't  hold.  When 
he  lost  the  ground  to  the  north,  he  had  to  re- 
treat from  here  in  a  hurry,  but  he  showed  his 
spite  first.  First  he  took  away  the  few  re- 
maining boys  and  girls  to  work  for  him  at  mak- 
ing shells  or  digging  trenches.  Then  they  went 
from  house  to  house  and  collected  all  the  furni- 
ture and  property  into  the  central  place  of  the 
town;  then  all  that  was  good  or  valuable  or 


72 

not  too  bulky  was  taken  by  enemy  soldiers,  offi- 
cers as  well  as  men,  as  prize  of  war,  and  sent 
home  to  their  homes.  But  all  the  rest,  the 
things  too  bulky  to  pack,  were  deliberately 
smashed,  defiled  and  broken,  and  the  fruit  trees 
were  systematically  killed." 

I  was  in  one  such  town  in  France  last  March 
the  day  after  the  enemy  left  it,  and  I  went  into 
one  poor  man's  garden  no  bigger  than  this  plat- 
form. Five  or  six  little  flowering  plants  had 
been  pulled  up  by  the  roots.  One  little  plum- 
tree  and  two  currant  bushes  had  been  cut 
through,  and  the  wall  parting  this  garden  from 
its  neighbour  had  been  thrown  down.  All  the 
wells  in  this  district  were  poisoned  by  the  en- 
emy before  he  left.  He  referred  to  this  in  his 
Orders  as  being  "  according  to  modern  theories 
of  war." 

Over  all  that  area  of  the  Army  Zone,  the 
business  of  the  inhabitants  is  destruction;  they 
rest  not  day  nor  night,  not  even  fog  nor  snow 
will  stop  them.  I  have  watched  a  raging  battle 
in  a  snowstorm,  and  one  of  our  neatest  suc- 
cesses was  made  in  a  fog.  And  at  night  the 
darkness  is  lit  with  starshells,  beautiful  coloured 
rockets,  flares,  searchlights  and  magnesiums,  so 
that  the  killing  may  go  on. 


The  War  and  the  Future  73 

You  may  wonder  what  kind  of  a  life  is  lived 
under  such  conditions. 

I  can  only  say  that  it  is  a  very  attractive  kind 
of  life,  and  that  most  men  who  leave  it 
want  to  go  back  to  it,  and  few  men  who 
have  lived  that  kind  of  life  find  it  easy  to  set- 
tle down  to  another.  And  you  will  see  men 
at  their  very  best  under  those  conditions.  You 
will  find  them  far  more  thoughtful  of  each 
other;  far  more  generous  and  self-sacrificing 
than  you  will  ever  see  them  in  time  of  peace. 
You  will  be  among  men  who  will  die  for  you 
without  a  moment's  thought  or  an  instant's 
hesitation,  and  who  will  share  their  last  food 
or  drink  with  you.  You  will  see  dying  men 
giving  up  their  last  breath  to  comfort  some 
other  wounded  man  who  may  be  suffering  more 
at  the  moment.  And  living  among  those  men, 
sharing  their  hardships  and  their  dangers,  you 
will  realize  to  the  full  the  sense  of  brotherhood 
and  the  unity  of  life  which  are  among  the 
deepest  feelings  which  can  come  to  men.  You 
will  realize  the  gaiety,  the  courage  and  the 
heroism  of  the  mind  of  man,  and  you  will 
realize  how  deeply  you  love  your  fellows. 

A  British  officer  has  defined  the  life  at  the 
front  as  "  damned  dull,  damned  dirty  and 


74  The  War  and  the  Future 

damned  dangerous."  It  is  dull,  because  you 
stand  in  a  gash  in  the  earth  behind  some  barbed 
wire  and  look  through  a  thing  called  periscope 
at  some  more  barbed  wire  two  hundred  yards 
away,  beyond  which,  somewhere,  is  the  enemy, 
whom  you  hardly  ever  see.  Then  when  you 
have  stood  in  the  trench  for  a  time,  you  are 
put  to  do  some  digging,  and  when  you  have 
done  the  digging  you  are  put  to  dig  something 
else,  and  when  you  have  done  that  digging  you 
are  put  to  dig  something  else.  And  when  you 
have  finished  digging  for  the  time,  you  are  put 
to  carrying  something  heavy  and  awkward,  and 
when  you  have  carried  that,  you  are  given 
something  else  to  carry,  and  when  you  have 
carried  that,  you  are  given  something  else  to 
carry,  and  the  next  morning  there  will  be  plenty 
of  other  things  to  carry.  The  work  of  sol- 
diers today  is  not  so  much  fighting,  as  digging 
trenches  and  roads  and  railways  and  wells. 
When  they  have  finished  digging,  they  have  to 
carry  up  the  heavy  and  awkward  things  needed 
at  the  front  lines.  Marshal  Joffre  said  that 
this  war  is  a  war  of  carriers.  The  Battle  of 
the  Marne  was  won  by  us  because  the  enemy 
carriers  failed,  and  Verdun  was  saved  to  us  be- 
cause the  French  carriers  did  not  fail.  All  the 


The  War  and  the  Future  75 

things  needed  in  the  front  line  are  heavy  and 
awkward  to  carry,  and  all  have  to  be  carried 
up,  on  the  shoulders  of  men.  The  image  left 
on  the  minds  of  most  men  by  this  war  is  not  an 
image  of  fighting,  nor  of  men  standing  in  the 
trenches,  nor  of  attacks,  nor  even  of  the  gun- 
ners at  the  guns;  it  is  the  image  of  little  parties 
of  men  plodding  along  in  single  file  through  the 
mud,  carrying  up  the  things  needed  in  the  front 
trenches;  barbed  wire,  trench  gratings,  trench 
pumps,  machine  guns,  machine  gun  ammunition, 
bombs,  Stokes  shells,  tins  of  bully  beef  and  tins 
of  water.  And  by  the  sides  of  the  gratings 
which  make  the  roads  near  the  front  you  will 
see  the  graves  of  hundreds  of  men  who  have 
lost  their  lives  in  carrying  up  these  things. 

And  when  it  rains,  as  it  has  rained  for  weeks 
together  on  the  Western  front  during  the  last 
three  years,  that  task  of  carrying  becomes  in- 
finitely more  terrible  to  the  men  than  standing 
in  the  trenches  to  be  killed  or  wounded.  All 
that  shot  up  field  becomes  a  vast  and  waveless 
sea  of  mud.  That  mud  has  to  be  seen  to  be 
believed,  it  cannot  be  described.  It  is  more 
dangerous  than  any  quicksand.  I  have  seen 
men  and  horses  stuck  in  it,  being  pulled  out 
with  ropes.  I  have  seen  soldiers  standing  in 


76  The  War  and  the  Future 

it  up  to  the  waist,  fast  asleep,  and  I  daresay  you 
have  seen  that  picture  of  the  two  soldiers  stand- 
ing in  it  up  to  the  chin,  one  of  them  saying  to 
the  other:  "  If  we  stay  here  much  longer  we 
shall  be  submarined."  There  is  nothing  like 
this  mud  for  breaking  men's  hearts.  Any  sol- 
dier on  the  Western  front  will  tell  you  that  the 
mud  is  the  real  enemy.  The  task  of  carrying 
up  supplies  across  that  mud,  becomes  by  much 
the  most  difficult  task  which  soldiers  are  called 
upon  to  do. 

In  spite  of  the  danger  and  the  occasional 
mud,  the  life  at  the  front  is  lived  with  cheer- 
fulness. There  is  much  joking,  though  many 
of  the  jokes  are  about  death  and  the  dead. 
Very  strange  and  romantic  things  happen  con- 
tinually, and  there  are  strange  escapes.  I 
have  not  seen  any  escape  quite  so  wonderful  as 
that  escape  vouched  for  during  your  Civil  War. 
The  story  goes  that  a  soldier  was  sitting  on  the 
ground  eating  his  supper.  Between  two  mouth- 
fuls  he  suddenly  leaped  into  the  air.  While  he 
was  in  the  air,  so  the  story  goes,  a  cannon  ball 
struck  the  ground  where  he  had  been  sitting. 
He  could  not  explain  afterwards  why  it  was 
that  he  jumped.  I  daresay  that  story  is  true. 
I  have  not  seen  anything  quite  so  wonderful  as 


The  War  and  the  Future  77 

that,  but  I  know  of  one  very  wonderful  escape, 
in  Gallipoli.  A  little  party  of  friends  sat  to- 
gether at  their  dugout  door,  watching  the  men 
swimming  on  the  beach  under  fire.  The  beach 
was  continually  under  fire,  but  it  was  no  more 
dangerous  than  the  dry  land,  and  as  swimming 
was  the  only  possible  relaxation  for  the  troops, 
they  were  allowed  to  swim.  While  they 
watched  the  swimmers,  these  friends  saw  a  soli- 
tary soldier  go  into  a  dugout  (some  distance 
down  the  hill)  and  draw  the  sacking  which 
served  as  a  door.  Evidently  he  was  settling 
in  for  his  siesta.  About  ten  minutes  later  a 
big  Turkish  shell  came  over.  There  were  three 
big  Turkish  guns  which  used  to  shell  the  beach. 
They  were  known  as  Beachy  Bill,  Asiatic  An- 
nie, and  Lousie  Liza.  A  shell  from  one  of 
these  guns  pitched  (apparently)  right  onto  the 
dugout  into  which  this  man  had  gone,  and 
burst.  The  friends  waited  for  a  minute  to  see 
if  another  shell  were  coming  near  the  same 
place,  but  the  next  shell  pitched  into  the  sea. 
They  then  went  down  to  see  if  they  could  be  of 
any  service,  though  they  expected  to  find  the 
man  blown  to  pieces.  As  they  drew  near  to 
the  wreck  of  the  dugout,  a  perfectly  naked  man 
emerged,  swearing.  What  had  happened  was 


78  The  War  and  the  Future 

this.  He  had  gone  into  the  dugout,  had  taken 
off  all  his  clothes  because  it  was  very  hot,  and 
had  lain  down  on  his  bed,  which  was  a  raised 
bank  of  earth,  perhaps  three  feet  above  the 
level  of  the  floor.  The  shell  had  come  through 
the  roof,  had  gone  into  the  floor  of  the  dugout, 
had  dug  a  hole  ten  feet  deep  and  had  then 
burst.  The  hole  and  the  raised  bank  of  earth 
together  had  protected  the  man  from  the  con- 
cussion and  from  the  chunks  of  shell.  He  him- 
self was  not  touched.  Everything  which  he 
possessed  was  blown  into  little  flinders,  and  he 
was  swearing  because  his  afternoon  sleep  had 
been  disturbed. 

In  the  same  place,  in  Gallipoli,  the  day  after 
the  landing,  the  26th  of  April,  1915,  an  Aus- 
tralian Captain  was  with  his  platoon  of  men 
in  a  trench  up  the  hill.  An  Australian  Major 
suddenly  appeared  to  this  Captain  and  said: 
"  Don't  let  your  men  fire  to  their  front  during 
the  next  half  hour.  An  Indian  working  party 
has  just  gone  up  to  your  front,  you  will  be  hit- 
ting some  of  them."  The  Captain  was  a  little 
puzzled  at  this,  because  he  had  seen  no  Indian 
working  party,  so  he  looked  at  the  Major,  and 
noticed  that  the  Major's  shoulder  strap  bore 
the  number  31.  That  puzzled  him,  because 


The  War  and  the  Future  79 

he  knew  that  only  eighteen  Australian  bat- 
talions had  landed  on  the  Peninsula  —  Num- 
bers one  to  eighteen  —  and  he  did  not  under- 
stand what  a  member  of  the  thirty-first  battalion 
could  be  doing  there.  So  he  looked  hard  at 
this  Major  and  said:  "Say,  are  you  Fair 
Dinkum?"  That  is  an  Australian  slang 
phrase  which  means,  "  Are  you  the  genuine 
thing?  Are  you  quite  all  that  you  pretend  to 
be?"  The  Major  said:  "Yes,  I'm  Major 
Fair  Dinkum." 

At  the  inquest  on  Major  Dinkum,  they  found 
that  he  had  taken  the  uniform  from  a  dead  Ma- 
jor of  the  thirteenth  battalion,  and  had  been 
afraid  to  wear  it  just  as  it  was,  for  fear  of  be- 
ing challenged,  so  he  had  reversed  the  numbers 
on  the  shoulder  straps,  and  made  them  thirty- 
one.  The  inquest  found  that  he  died  from  lead 
in  the  head. 

A  branch  of  the  service  which  is  very  little 
recognized  but  exceedingly  dangerous  is  that 
branch  of  the  messengers  who  carry  messages 
and  carrier  pigeons  and  telephone  wires  during 
an  attack.  One  of  the  most  difficult  things  in 
modern  war  is  to  let  your  own  side  know  ex- 
actly how  far  an  attack  has  progressed.  You 
send  back  messengers  and  the  messengers  are 


8o  The  War  and  the  Future 

killed.  You  run  out  telephone  wires  and  the 
wires  are  cut,  as  fast  as  they  are  laid,  by  shells 
or  bullets.  You  send  back  carrier  pigeons  and 
the  carrier  pigeons  are  killed.  During  the 
Battle  of  the  Somme  a  friend  of  mine  was  up 
in  a  tree  correcting  the  fire  of  his  battery.  He 
had  a  telephone  and  a  telescope.  He  watched 
the  bursting  of  the  shells  and  then  telephoned 
back  to  the  guns  to  correct  their  fire.  While 
he  was  doing  this,  he  glanced  back  at  the  Eng- 
lish lines,  and  saw  a  great  enemy  barrage 
bursting  between  himself  and  his  friends,  in  a 
kind  of  wall  of  explosion.  And  hopping  along 
through  this  barrage  came  one  solitary  English 
soldier,  who  paid  no  more  attention  to  the  shells 
than  if  they  had  been  hail.  He  looked  to  see 
this  man  blown  to  pieces,  but  he  wasn't  blown 
to  pieces;  and  then  he  saw  that  it  was  his  own 
servant  bringing  a  letter.  He  wondered  what 
kind  of  a  letter  could  be  brought  under  such 
conditions,  and  what  Stirring  thing  made  it 
necessary,  so  he  climbed  down  the  tree  and  took 
the  letter  and  read  it.  The  letter  ran:  "  The 
Veterinary  Surgeon-Major  begs  to  report,  that 
your  old  mare  is  suffering  from  a  fit  of  the 
strangles."  The  servant  saluted  and  said : 
"Any  answer,  sir?"  And  my  friend  said: 


The  War  and  the  Future  81 

"  No,  no  answer.  Acknowledge."  The  serv- 
ant saluted  and  went  back  with  the  acknowledg- 
ment, hopping  through  the  barrage  as  though 
perhaps  it  were  a  little  wet,  but  not  worth  put- 
ting on  a  mackintosh  for. 

There  is  another  story  told  of  a  General 
(during  an  attack  in  the  Battle  of  the  Somme) 
who  could  not  learn  how  far  his  division  had 
gone.  It  was  a  matter  of  the  most  intense 
anxiety  to  him.  He  sent  out  messengers  who 
never  returned,  the  telephone  wires  were  cut  as 
fast  as  they  were  laid,  and  no  pigeons  came 
back.  He  stood  beside  the  pigeon-loft  biting 
his  finger  nails.  Then  at  last,  out  of  the  battle, 
came  a  solitary  pigeon,  and  the  General  cried: 
"  There  she  is,  there  she  is.  Now  we  shall 
know."  The  pigeon  came  circling  out  of  the 
smoke,  and  came  down  to  the  pigeon-loft  and 
went  in.  The  General  said,  "  Go  in,  man,  go 
in,  and  get  the  message !  "  So  the  pigeon 
fancier  went  into  the  loft  and  was  gone  rather 
a  long  time,  and  the  General  cried:  "  Read 
it  out,  man,  read  it  out.  What  do  they  say?  " 
The  man  replied,  "  I'd  rather  not  read  it  aloud, 
sir."  The  General  said:  "Bring  it  here, 
man."  The  General  took  the  message  and 
read  it,  and  the  message  ran :  "  I'm  not  go- 


82  The  War  and  the  Future 

ing  to  carry  this  bloody  poultry  any  longer." 
I  have  said  something  about  the  dulness  and 
the  dirtiness  of  the  life,  but  there  is  a  kind  of 
dirtiness  to  which  I  have  not  yet  alluded.  On 
your  way  up  to  the  front  you  are  struck  by  the 
number  of  soldiers  sitting  on  the  doorsteps  of 
ruined  houses  studying  the  tails  of  their  shirts 
as  though  they  were  precious  manuscripts. 
When  you  are  at  the  front  you  notice  that  the 
men  have  an  uneasy  way  with  their  shoulders 
as  though  they  wished  to  be  scraping  along 
brick  walls,  and  when  you  have  slept  one  night 
at  the  front  you  realize  what  the  soldier  meant 
when  he  wrote  home  to  say:  "  This  war  isn't 
a  very  bloody  war,  so  far  as  I've  seen  it,  but  it 
does  tickle  at  night."  I  would  like  to  ask  all 
those  who  are  sending  packets  of  clothing  to 
their  friends  at  the  front  always  to  include  the 
strongest  insecticide  they  can  find,  because, 
though  no  insecticide  is  really  strong  enough  to 
kill  the  creatures,  a  good  strong  insecticide  will 
take  the  edge  off  them.  The  condition  of  need- 
ing insecticide  is  known  as  being  "  chatty." 
Not  long  ago  an  English  actress  was  playing  to 
the  soldiers  in  a  base  camp.  She  was  playing 
a  play  of  Barrie's,  in  which  a  lady  says  of  her 
husband  that  he  was  so  nice  and  "  chatty." 


The  War  and  the  Future  83 

She  was  interrupted  by  a  burst  of  joy  from  the 
troops.  She  could  not  understand  what  she 
had  said  to  disturb  them. 

Next  as  to  the  danger  at  the  front.  In  pro- 
portion to  the  numbers  engaged,  this  war  is  by 
much  the  least  dangerous  war  of  which  we  have 
any  record.  The  great  scourges  of  ancient 
armies,  typhus  fever,  typhoid,  smallpox  and 
measles,  have  been  practically  eliminated  from 
this  war.  The  only  outbreak  of  typhus,  so 
far  as  I  know,  was  the  outbreak  in  Serbia  in 
1915,  and  that  was  due  not  to  the  soldiers,  but 
to  the  filthy  conditions  in  which  the  Serbian 
refugees  were  forced  to  live.  A  friend  of 
mine,  a  Doctor,  was  in  charge  of  a  hospital 
during  that  epidemic.  The  hospital  was  a  big 
church  which  was  completely  filled  with  misery 
of  every  sort;  typhus  cases,  typhoid  cases, 
smallpox  cases,  maternity  cases  and  children 
with  measles,  all  jammed  up  together,  and  no- 
body to  look  after  them  but  my  friend  and  a 
few  Austrian  prisoners.  The  place  was  very 
filthy,  crawling  with  vermin,  and  pretty  nearly 
every  known  language  was  spoken  there.  One 
day  a  strange  man  appeared  on  the  scene  of 
misery.  The  orderlies  asked  my  friend  what 
they  should  do  with  him.  My  friend  looked 


84  The  War  and  the  Future 

at  the  man,  and  saw  that  he  was  pale  and 
shaggy,  so  he  said,  "  Just  wash  him  and  put 
him  into  one  of  the  beds."  So  they  washed 
him.  He  protested  very  vigorously,  but  they 
did  it,  and  they  put  him  into  one  of  the  beds. 
He  protested  very  vigorously  against  that,  but 
they  put  him  in  and  kept  him  there.  My 
friend,  being  very  busy,  was  not  able  to  see  him 
for  the  rest  of  the  day,  and  didn't  get  round  to 
him  until  the  next  morning.  Then  he  found 
that  he  wasn't  sick  at  all,  but  had  come  with  a 
message  from  some  neighbouring  hospital. 

As  to  the  danger  from  missiles  at  the  front, 
it  is  true,  that  at  any  minute  of  the  day  or  night, 
in  any  part  of  the  Army  Zone,  you  may  be- 
come a  casualty,  and  the  thing  which  makes  you 
a  casualty  may  bury  you  as  well,  or  blow  you 
into  such  small  fragments  that  nothing  of  you 
may  ever  be  seen  again,  nor  anybody  know 
what  has  become  of  you.  Even  if  you  are 
away  from  the  front,  on  some  battlefield  where 
there  has  been  no  fighting  for  months,  you  are 
still  in  danger,  because  the  ground  is  littered 
with  explosives  in  a  more  or  less  dangerous  con- 
dition. There  are  bombs  which  are  going  off 
because  their  safety  pins  have  rusted  through, 
and  shells  which  go  off  for  no  apparent  cause. 


The  War  and  the  Future  85 

You  may  jump  across  an  open  trench  and  land 
on  a  percussion  bomb  and  kill  yourself,  or  you 
may  be  riding  along,  and  your  horse  may  kick 
a  percussion  bomb  and  kill  you.  Or  you  may 
meet  a  souvenir  hunter  who  will  be  equally 
deadly.  And  then  some  soldiers  love  to  collect 
shells  which  have  not  exploded  and  then  light 
fires  under  them  for  the  pleasure  of  hearing 
them  go  Bang!  They  love  to  collect  bombs 
and  fling  them  at  targets  for  their  amusement. 
Last  summer  a  General  was  walking  on  the 
old  battlefield,  when  he  heard  a  noise  of  cheer- 
ing. There  came  a  Bang,  and  bits  of  shrapnel 
came  flying  past.  Then  there  came  another 
cheer,  and  another  Bang  and  some  more  shrap- 
nel. So,  guessing  what  was  the  matter,  he 
jumped  up  onto  the  trench  parapet  and  looked 
down.  There  he  saw  a  burly  soldier  who  had 
rigged  up  a  target  to  represent  a  German  and 
was  bowling  Mills  bombs  at  it.  At  each  bomb 
he  shouted  out:  "  Every  time  you  hit  you  get 
a  good  cigar !  "  The  General  jumped  onto 
this  man  and  said:  "  Here,  what  are  you  do- 
ing? Don't  you  know  that's  against  orders?  " 
The  man  turned  up  the  face  of  an  innocent  child 
and  said :  "  No  sir."  "  Well,"  said  the  Gen- 
eral, "  at  least  you  know  it's  very  dangerous, 


86  The  War  and  the  Future 

don't  you?  "  The  man  looked  at  the  General 
and  sized  him  up,  and  said,  "  Yes,  General. 
That's  just  why  I  was  doing  it,  sir.  You  know, 
sir,  I'm  a  family  man,  sir.  I  daresay  you  are 
yourself,  sir.  And  I  was  thinking,  in  a  little 
while  the  little  children  will  be  coming  back  to 
these  old  battlefields.  They  won't  know  what 
these  cruel  bombs  are,  sir,  they'll  go  playing 
with  them,  poor  little  things,  sir,  and  they'll 
blow  off  their  little  arms,  sir,  and  their  little 
legs,  sir.  Then  think  of  their  poor  mothers' 
feelings.  So  I  just  collected  these  few  bombs, 
sir,  really  in  order  to  save  those  little  children, 
sir."  So  he  was  acquitted  as  a  philanthropist. 
While  I  am  on  the  subject  of  bombs,  I  may 
say  what  happened  to  a  boy  of  the  Gloucester 
Battalion  in  Gallipoli.  The  boy  was  an  agri- 
cultural laborer  before  the  war  and  rather 
stronger  in  the  arm  than  in  the  head.  A  friend 
came  to  his  mother  and  said:  "Oh,  Mrs. 
Brown,  what  news  have  you  of  Bert?  "  Mrs. 
Brown  beamed  all  over  her  face  and  said: 
"  Oh,  our  Bert,  he  have  had  a  narrow  escape. 
He  was  in  Gallipoli  and  there  come  a  Turk 
and  flung  one  of  they  bombs,  and  the  bomb 
fell  just  at  our  Bert's  feet,  but  our  Bert  he 
never  hesitate,  he  pick  it  up,  and  he  flung  it 


The  War  and  the  Future  87 

right  to  the  other  end  of  the  trench,  and  it  burst 
just  as  it  got  there.  It  killed  two  of  our  Bert's 
best  friends,  but  if  our  Bert  hadn't  flung  it  just 
when  he  done,  it  would  have  killed  our  Bert." 

During  the  course  of  this  war  some  six  or 
seven  millions  of  men  have  been  drawn  into 
the  English  Army  from  every  rank  of  society, 
and  have  submitted  to  a  pretty  rough  test.  Un- 
der that  test,  thousands  of  men,  who  had  had 
no  opportunity  of  showing  what  was  in  them 
in  time  of  peace,  have  risen  to  positions  of 
great  dignity,  trust  and  authority.  And  as  a 
result,  the  Army  today  is  a  thoroughly  demo- 
cratic thing.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war  it 
was  not  so.  I  know  of  a  case,  in  which  a  rich 
man  enlisted  with  his  shepherd.  He  told  the 
shepherd,  when  he  enlisted,  "  Of  course,  I  shall 
pay  your  wages  as  my  shepherd  all  the  time 
that  we  are  serving."  When  they  were  in  the 
Battalion  the  shepherd  soon  proved  himself  to 
be  the  better  man.  The  shepherd  became  a 
Sergeant  and  his  master  remained  a  private. 
Presently,  the  master  did  something  wrong  and 
the  shepherd  had  him  up  and  got  him  ten  days' 
fatigue.  As  he  left  the  court,  the  master  leaned 
over  to  the  shepherd  and  said:  "  Your  wages 
are  stopped  for  these  ten  days."  That  was  in 


88  The  War  and  the  Future 

the  early  days  of  the  war,  when  the  democratic 
leaven  was  not  working  very  well.  But  it  is 
working  very  well  today.  I  know  of  a  case  of 
a  young  man  who  began  life  as  a  stable  boy  in  a 
racing  stable.  He  didn't  like  the  life,  so  he 
became  a  carpenter;  he  was  a  carpenter  when 
the  war  began.  He  enlisted  in  a  cavalry  regi- 
ment, because  he  was  very  fond  of  horses;  and 
as  he  knew  a  great  deal  about  the  management 
of  horses  he  was  given  a  commission  straight- 
away. He  was  always  a  man  of  great  good 
temper  and  charm  and  tact  in  dealing  with  other 
men.  He  soon  rose  to  a  Captain.  He  went 
to  France  with  the  battalion,  served  in  the 
trenches,  dismounted,  and  soon  rose  to  be  Colo- 
nel of  the  battalion.  He  handled  the  battalion 
with  great  distinction  and  was  made  a  Briga- 
dier-General, and  he  is  a  Brigadier-General 
today. 

Last  summer  I  was  talking  with  a  General 
about  the  war,  and  he  said:  "  Guess  what  my 
best  staff  officer  was  before  the  war?"  I 
couldn't  guess.  He  said  he  was  a  barber's  as- 
sistant. "  Now  what  do  you  think  my  second 
best  staff  officer  was  before  the  war?  "  Again 
I  couldn't  guess.  He  said,  "  He  was  a  milk- 
man's assistant  and  went  round  with  the  milk 


The  War  and  the  Future  89 

cans  in  the  morning.  Now  what  do  you  think 
my  third  best  staff  officer  was  before  the  war? 
He's  the  bravest  man  I've  got."  Again  I  could 
not  guess.  He  said,  "  He  was  a  milliner's  as- 
sistant, and  sold  ribbons  over  the  counter." 

When  the  war  is  over  and  these  men  are  dis- 
banded back  into  every  rank  of  society,  they 
will  carry  with  them  this  democratic  leaven.  I 
am  quite  sure  that  England,  after  the  war,  will 
be  as  democratic  a  country  as  this  country  or 
France. 

If  you  turn  your  back  upon  the  Army  Zone 
and  walk  into  the  green  and  pleasant  parts  of 
France,  you  will  notice  that  every  big  building 
in  France  is  flying  a  Red  Cross  flag,  for  every 
big  building  now  in  France  is  a  hospital.  The 
business  of  the  care  of  the  wounded  is  a  bigger 
business  than  coal  or  cotton  or  steel  in  time  of 
peace.  There  are  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
orderlies  and  nurses  and  all  the  picked  surgeons 
of  the  world  looking  after  the  wounded. 
There  are  miles  of  Red  Cross  trains  carrying 
wounded,  and  there  are  more  ships  carrying 
wounded  than  carried  passengers  between  Eng- 
land and  America  in  the  time  of  peace.  I 
should  like  to  tell  you  of  one  or  two  things 


90  The  War  and  the  Future 

which  have  been  done  to  better  the  lot  of  the 
wounded.  Firstly,  about  facial  surgery.  In 
this  war  of  high  explosives  it  often  happens 
that  men  will  be  brought  in  with  all  their  faces 
blown  away,  with  practically  no  face  left  be- 
neath their  brows,  their  noses  gone,  their 
cheeks  gone,  their  jaws  and  their  tongues  gone. 
In  the  old  days,  if  those  men  had  survived  at 
all,  they  could  only  have  survived  as  objects 
of  pity  and  horror  and  disgust.  But  today  the 
facial  surgeon  steps  in  and  re-makes  their  faces. 
The  facial  surgeon  begins  by  taking  a  bone  from 
the  man's  leg.  Out  of  that  bone  they  model 
him  a  new  jaw-bone,  which  they  graft  onto  the 
stumps  of  the  old.  Then  cunning  artists  model 
him  a  new  palate  and  a  new  set  of  teeth.  Then, 
bit  by  bit,  they  begin  to  make  him  new  cheeks. 
They  get  little  bits  of  skin  from  the  man's  arm, 
and  other  little  bits  from  volunteers,  and  they 
graft  these  on  to  what  was  left  of  the  man's 
cheeks.  Though  it  takes  a  long  time  to  do, 
they  do  at  last  make  complete  cheeks.  Then 
they  take  a  part  of  a  sheep's  tongue  and  graft 
it  on  to  the  roots  of  the  man's  tongue,  so  that  it 
grows.  Then  they  add  artificial  lips,  an  arti- 
ficial nose,  and  whiskers,  beard  and  moustaches, 
if  the  man  chooses.  They  turn  the  man  out, 


The  War  and  the  Future  91 

oftener  handsomer  than  he  ever  was  before, 
able  to  talk,  and  to  earn  his  own  living  on  equal 
terms  with  his  fellowmen.  In  all  that  work  of 
facial  surgery  the  American  surgeons  have  set  a 
standard  for  the  rest  of  the  world.  What 
they  have  done  is  amazing.  You  can  see  the 
men  brought  in,  looking  like  nothing  human, 
looking  like  bloody  mops  on  the  ends  of  sticks. 
Gradually  you  see  them  becoming  human  and 
at  last  becoming  handsome  and  at  last  almost 
indistinguishable  from  their  fellows.  Surgeons 
not  only  restore  the  men  fresh  from  the  battle- 
field, but  they  remake  the  faces  of  those  who 
have  been  badly  patched  up  in  distant  parts  of 
this  war,  such  as  Mesopotamia,  where  special 
treatment  has  been  impossible,  and  though  this 
re-making  takes  a  very  long  time,  it  can  still  be 
done. 

Another  very  wonderful  treatment  is  the 
treatment  of  the  burned  men.  In  this  war  of 
high  explosives  and  flame  projectors  many  men 
are  shockingly  burned.  You  may  see  men 
brought  in  with  practically  no  skin  on  them 
above  their  waist,  unable  to  rest,  and  suffer- 
ing torments.  They  apply  the  new  treatment 
of  Ambrene  to  these  sufferers.  Ambrene  is 
said  to  be  a  by-product  of  paraffin  mixed  with 


92  The  War  and  the  Future 

resin  and  with  amber.  It  is  applied  in  a  liquid 
form  with  a  camel's  hair  brush.  Directly  it 
touches  the  burned  surface  all  pain  ceases  and 
the  man  is  able  to  rest.  In  a  fortnight  the  man 
has  an  entirely  new  skin,  with  no  scar  and  prac- 
tically no  discoloration,  and  he  is  able  to  go 
back  to  the  trenches,  often  much  disgusted  at 
being  cured  so  soon. 

When  you  have  seen  the  wounded  you  have 
seen  the  fruits  of  this  business.  And  when  you 
have  seen  the  wounded  you  resolve  within  your- 
self that  at  whatever  cost  this  must  be  the  last 
war  of  this  kind.  This  war  is  being  fought  to- 
day in  order  that  it  may  be  the  last  war  of  its 
kind.  If  we  succeed  in  this,  as  we  shall,  all  the 
bloodshed  and  horror  and  misery  of  this  war 
will  have  been  very  well  worth  while.  But  even 
when  we  have  gotten  rid  of  the  causes  of  this 
war,  there  will  still  remain,  in  all  human  socie- 
ties, many  potential  causes  of  war.  A  great 
deal  of  cant  is  talked  about  war.  In  all  com- 
mercial countries  there  must  be  some  manufac- 
turers who  make  things  that  will  be  of  great 
demand  in  war,  and  it  is  an  unfortunate  fact 
that  after  long  periods  of  peace  men  begin  to 
think  a  great  deal  about  war,  to  read  about  it, 
and  to  brood  upon  it,  and  even  to  long  for  it,  so 


The  War  and  the  Future  93 

that  they  may  have  that  deep  experience  for 
themselves.  And  to  many  young  men  war  is 
exceedingly  delightful.  It  gives  them  adven- 
ture, excitement  and  comradeship.  Only  the 
other  day  a  young  English  soldier  said  to  me: 
"  Do  you  think  this  lovely  war  will  ever  come 
to  an  end?  "  I  said  I  hoped  it  would,  some 
day.  And  he  said,  "  Well,  I  don't  know  what 
I  shall  do  when  it  comes  to  an  end.  It  will 
break  my  heart.  I've  had  the  time  of  my  life." 
That  boy  was  not  quite  nineteen.  He  had  been 
a  school-boy  six  months  before.  He  had  been 
badly  wounded  three  weeks  before.  He  had 
been  at  death's  door  a  fortnight  before.  He 
had  made  an  amazing  recovery  and  was  pant- 
ing to  get  back.  There  are  hundreds  of  thou- 
sand of  young  men  like  that,  who  thoroughly  en- 
joy every  minute  of  it.  The  older  men  do  not 
view  war  with  quite  such  enthusiasm.  Their 
attitude,  perhaps,  is  much  like  that  of  the 
Naval  Officer  who  said  the  other  day:  "  I  do 
wish  to  God  this  war  would  end,  so  that  I  could 
get  the  men  back  to  battle  practice." 

Even  if  we  were  able  to  be  rid  of  all  these 
potential  causes  of  war  we  should  not  get  rid 
of  evil  in  this  world,  and  as  long  as  men  can  be 
evil,  evil  men  will  strike  for  power,  and  the 


94  The  War  and  the  Future 

only  way  to  resist  evil  men,  when  they  do  evil 
things,  is  to  use  force  to  them.  It  often  needs 
a  very  great  deal  of  force. 

Yet  when  people  ask  me  if  I  think  that  wars 
will  cease  to  be,  I  always  say  that  I  do,  because 
the  evil  things  in  this  world  do  get  knocked  on 
the  head.  The  dragons  and  basilisks  and 
cockatrices  have  become  extinct,  and  most  mur- 
derers get  hanged,  and  most  lunatics  get  locked 
up;  and  men  are  coming  more  and  more  to  see 
that  certain  evils  that  afflict  life  are  not  inevit- 
able, and  are  not  the  will  of  God,  but  are  simply 
the  result  of  obsolete  and  stupid  ways  of  think- 
ing and  of  governing.  It  ought  to  be  possible 
for  the  mind  of  man,  which  made  the  steam 
engine,  the  submarine  and  the  aeroplane,  and 
conquered  the  Black  Death  and  yellow  fever 
and  typhus  fever,  to  devise  some  means  of 
living,  nation  with  nation,  without  this  peri- 
odical slaughter  known  as  war.  It  won't  be 
easy  to  devise  any  such  means,  men  being  what 
they  are,  with  the  instincts  for  war  deeply 
rooted  in  their  hearts,  or  easily  put  there  by 
their  rulers;  yet  the  mind  of  man  can  do  most 
things,  if  he  can  only  get  the  will  to  do  them. 

Even  before  this  war,  when  most  men  were 
either  unoccupied  or  occupied  only  in  the  grim 


The  War  and  the  Future  95 

and  stupid  devilry  of  plotting  and  preparing 
war;  men  tried  to  limit  and  prevent  war,  the 
Hague  Conferences  did  sit.  They  didn't  limit 
or  prevent  war,  because  they  were  not  meant  to. 
While  they  sat,  one  great  power  was  doubling 
its  army,  and  a  second  was  doubling  its  strate- 
gic railways,  and  a  third  was  increasing  its 
navy,  and  all  were  afraid,  each  of  the  other. 
How  could  peace  come  from  men  under  those 
conditions? 

Then,  though  they  made  recommendations, 
the  Hague  delegates  had  no  power  to  enforce 
them.  They  knew  this  when  they  made  them. 
Their  recommendations  were  therefore  not 
forceful.  They  seemed  to  say,  that  war  is  in- 
evitable, let  us  temper  its  horror.  They  did 
not  say,  war  has  no  business  in  modern  life, 
henceforth  those  who  make  war  shall  be  treated 
as  criminals  by  an  international  police. 

They  could  not  say  that,  but  the  Peace  Dele- 
gates of  the  future  will  have  to  say  it,  if  there 
is  to  be  any  future.  And  after  this  war  men 
will  listen  to  them  if  they  do  say  it,  for  after 
this  war  men  will  passionately  want  to  limit 
and  prevent  war.  They  know  now,  that  the 
devil  of  war,  which  they  fed  with  their  arro- 
gance, their  envy,  their  strength  and  their  stu- 


g6  The  War  and  the  Future 

pidity,  is  an  overwhelming  monster  which  eats 
them  wholesale. 

Not  long  ago,  I  was  talking  to  an  American 
about  this  ending  of  war  by  internationalism. 
He  said:  "  If  two  great  peoples  would  agree 
to  it,  it  could  be  done ;  and  if  your  country  and 
mine  would  agree  to  it,  it  would  be  done." 
Don't  think  me  a  dreamer,  an  idealist,  a  pacifist. 
I  am  for  the  common  man  and  woman,  whose 
tears  and  blood  pay  for  war.  And  in  that  mat- 
ter of  payment,  the  poor  German  pays,  equally 
with  the  poor  Belgian.  He  pays  with  all  he 
has.  On  the  battlefields  of  this  war  I  have  seen 
the  men  who  paid.  I  have  seen  enemy  dead, 
and  Turk  dead,  and  French  dead,  and  English 
dead,  and  every  dead  man  meant  some  woman 
with  a  broken  heart. 

Those  men  had  no  quarrel  with  each  other. 
They  lie  there  in  the  mud,  because  man,  who 
has  conquered  the  black  death  and  typhus  and 
smallpox,  and  the  yellow  fever,  has  not  con- 
quered the  war  fever.  And  the  war  fever  takes 
him  in  the  blood  and  in  the  soul  and  kills  him 
by  the  hundred  thousand. 

When  the  blessed  bells  ring  for  peace,  this 
year  or  next  year,  in  man's  time  if  not  in  ours, 


The  War  and  the  Future  97 

it  may  be  possible  to  remake  the  ways  of  na- 
tional life  more  in  accordance  with  man's  place 
in  the  universe.  When  that  time  comes, 
France,  this  country,  and  England,  the  three 
countries  which  have  done  the  most  for  liberty, 
will  have  deciding  voices  in  that  remaking. 
They  will  be  able  to  declare  in  what  ways  of 
freedom  the  men  and  women  of  the  future  will 
walk.  I  trust  that  our  three  great  nations  may 
be  able  to  substitute  some  co-operating  system 
of  internationalism  for  the  competing  national- 
ism which  led  to  the  present  bonfire. 

And  when  that  time  comes,  I  hope  that  one 
other  thing  may  be  possible.  I  hope  that  my 
people,  the  English,  may,  as  your  comrades  in 
this  war,  do  something  or  be  something  or  be- 
come something  which  will  atone  in  some  meas- 
ure for  the  wrongs  we  did  to  you  in  the  past, 
and  for  the  misunderstandings  which  have 
arisen  between  us  since  then.  I'm  afraid  that 
the  memory  of  those  old  wrongs  may  never 
pass,  for  nations,  like  people,  do  not  forget 
their  childhood.  Yet  I  hope  for  the  sake  of  the 
world,  that  it  may  be  set  aside,  so  that  your 
country  and  mine,  which  have  one  great  key  to 
understanding,  which  other  nations  have  not, 


98  The  War  and  the  Future 

the  same  language,  may,  after  this  time  of  war 
work  like  friends  together,  to  make  wars  to 
cease  upon  this  earth. 


IN    THK    TTNITBD    STATI8    OF    AMIBIOA 


T 


HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  Mac- 
millan  books  by  the  same  author. 


THE  WORKS  OF  JOHN  MASEFIELD 

Gallipoli 

"This  is  a  miniature  epic,  or  saga,  its  eloquent  but  un- 
forced prose  making  it  a  book  that  will  stand  high  among 
Masefield's  productions.  .  .  .  Masefield  writes  of  the  mili- 
tary aspect  of  the  campaign  with  a  rare  facility  for  pic- 
torial expression  ...  a  splendid  story  of  bravery  splen- 
didly told." — New  York  Evening  Post. 

The  Old  Front  Line 

Illustrated.     Cloth,  izmo.    $1.00 

What  Mr.  Masefield  did  for  the  Gallipoli  Campaign,  he 
now  does  for  the  Campaign  in  France.  His  subject  is  the 
old  front  line  as  it  was  when  the  battle  of  the  Somme  be- 
gan. His  account  is  vivid  and  gripping  —  a  huge  conflict 
seen  through  the  eyes  of  a  great  poet,  this  is  the  book. 

Good  Friday  and  Other  Poems 

BY  JOHN  MASEFIELD 

Cloth.  $1.25.     Leather,  $1.75 

"  Reveals  an  interesting  development  in  poetic  thought 
and  expression  ...  a  new  Masefield  .  .  .  who  has  never 
written  with  more  dignity,  nor  with  more  artistry.  Those 
who  go  in  quest  of  Beauty  will  find  her  here.  .  .  .  Here  is 
beauty  of  impression,  beauty  of  expression,  beauty  of 
thought,  and  beauty  of  phrase." —  The  New  York  Times. 

The  Story  of  a  Round-House, 
and  Other  Poems 

New  and  revised  edition,  $1.30.     Leather,  $1.75 

"  The  story  of  that  rounding  of  the  Horn !  Never  in  prose  has 
the  sea  been  so  tremendously  described." —  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"  Masefield  has  prisoned  in  verse  the  spirit  of  life  at  sea." — N.  Y. 
Sun. 


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THE  WORKS  OF  JOHN  MASE FIELD 

The  Everlasting  Mercy  and 
The  Widow  in  the  Bye  Street 

(Awarded  the  Royal   Society  of  Literature's  prize  of  $500) 

New  and  revised  edition,  $1.25.     Leather,  $1.75 

"  Mr.  Masefield  comes  like  a  flash  of  light  across  contemporary 
English  poetry.  The  improbable  has  been  accomplished;  he  has 
made  poetry  out  of  the  very  material  that  has  refused  to  yield  it  for 
almost  a  score  of  years." —  Boston  Evening  Transcript. 

"  A  vigour  and  sincerity  rare  in  modern  English  literature."— 
The  Independent. 

Philip  the  King,  and  Other  Poems 

Cloth,  ittno,  $1.25.     Leather,  $1.75 

"  Mr.  Masefield  has  never  done  anything  better  than  these 
poems." —  Argonaut. 

Lollingdon  Downs  and  Other  Poems 

*IJ3 

A  new  book  of  poems  by  Mr.  Masefield,  containing  his 
most  recent  work  in  verse.  The  same  beauty  of  expres- 
sion and  impression  which  pervaded  his  earlier  poetry  will 
be  found  in  the  pages  of  "  Lollingdon  Downs  and  Other 
Poems."  These  latest  of  Mr.  Masefield's  poems  are  issued 
in  a  limited  edition. 

The  Daffodil  Fields 

Cloth,  izmo,  $1.25.     Leather,  $1.75 

"  Neither  in  the  design  nor  in  the  telling  did  or  could  '  Enoch 
Arden  '  come  near  the  artistic  truth  of  '  The  Daffodil  Fields.'  " — 
Sir  Quiller-Cottch.  Cambridge  University. 

Salt  Water  Poems  and  Ballads 

Illustrated,  $2.00 

"The  salt  of  the  sea  is  in  these  jingles  not  the  mystic  sea  of  the 
older  poets  who  had  an  art,  but  the  hard  sea  that  men  fight,  even 
in  these  days  of  leviathan  liners,  in  stout-timbered  bulls  with  blocks 
to  rattle  and  hemp  for  the  gale  to  whistle  through  and  give  the  salt- 
lipped  chantey  man  his  rugged  meters." — New  York  Sun. 


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THE  WORKS  OF  JOHN  MASE FIELD 

A  Mainsail  Haul 

Cloth,  izmo,  $1.25.     Leather,  $1.75 

As  a  sailor  before  the  mast  Masefield  has  traveled  the 
world  over.  Many  of  the  tales  in  this  volume  are  his  own 
experiences  written  with  the  same  dramatic  fidelity  dis- 
played in  "  Dauber." 

Multitude  and  Solitude 

$1.35 

"  This  is  material  of  the  best  kind  for  a  story  of  adventure,  and 
Mr.  Masefield  uses  it  to  the  best  advantage.  He  has  the  gift  of 
direct  and  simple  narrative,  and  it  need  hardly  be  said  that  he 
knows  the  human  heart." —  Argonaut. 


Captain  Margaret 

Cloth,  $1.50 

"  Worthy  to  rank  high  among  books  of  its  class.     The  story  has 
quality,  charm,  and  spirited  narrative." —  Outlook. 


Lost  Endeavour 


A  stirring  story  of  adventure,  dealing  with  pirates  and 
buccaneers,  and  life  on  the  seas  in  a  day  when  an  ocean 
trip  was  beset  with  all  kinds  of  dangers  and  excitements. 
Those  who  have  enjoyed  "Captain  Margaret"  and  "Mul- 
titude and  Solitude  "  will  find  this  tale  equally  exhilarating. 


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THE   WORKS  OF  JOHN  MASE  FIELD 

The  Tragedy  of  Pompey 

Cloth,  iftno.  $1.25.     Leather,  J/75 

A  play  such  as  only  the  author  of  "  Nan  "  conld  have 
written.  Tense  in  situation  and  impressive  in  its  poetry  it 
conveys  Masefield's  genius  in  the  handling  of  the  dramatic 
form. 

The  Faithful:  A  Tragedy  in  Three  Acts 

Cloth,  $1.25.     Leather,  $1.75 

"  A  striking  drama  ...  a  notable  work  that  will  meet  with  the 
hearty  appreciation  of  discerning  readers."  —  The  Nation. 


The  Tragedy  of  Nan 

New  edition.     Cloth,  $1.25.     Leather,  $1.75 

"  One  of  the  most  distinctive  tragedies  written  by  a  dramatist  of 
the  modern  school."  —  N.  Y.  Evening  Post. 

The  Locked  Chest,  and  the  Sweeps  of 
Ninety-Eight 


The  place  of  Mr.  Masefield  as  a  dramatist  has  been 
amply  proved  by  the  plays  which  he  has  published  hitherto. 
In  the  realm  of  the  one-act  play  he  is  seen  to  quite  as  good 
effect  as  in  the  longer  work,  and  this  volume  ranks  with 
his  best. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers     64-66  Fifth  Avenue     New  York 


RFrn 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


66 


2  4 


Book  Slip-25m-7,'61(C1437f.4)4280 


UCLA-College  Library 

D  523  M38s  1918 


L  005  725  330  4 


i    I    II     II     ||     II 

001  002  047     7 


College 
Library 

D 

523 
M38s 
1918 


